


everybody's changing (and I don't feel the same)

by traenentinte



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Al finds his place in life, Albus Severus Potter-centric, Albus doesn't know what to do with life, Angst, Aromanticism, Artist Albus Severus Potter, Asexuality, Character Death, Divination, F/M, Found Family, Friend Heartbreak, Friends are really damn important people, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Harry Potter Next Generation, Hurt/Comfort, Magical Paintings, Mental Health Issues, Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, POV Albus Severus Potter, Questioning, Ravenclaw Albus Severus Potter, Repressed Emotions, Unconventional Marriage, Unreliable Narrator, Using Choose not to use archive warnings for character death I'm not sure counts as major, adding tags as I go, and, aspec character, but it's not the focus, divination of questionable quality, hints of - Freeform, more as in you're not sure if it's bad divination, not as in bad divination, there's some romance here, tries to in any case
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 222,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23148061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traenentinte/pseuds/traenentinte
Summary: Albus Potter has never been a problem child. Compared to too-cheeky-James, Lily-lacking-regard-for-her-personal-safety, raising-the-dead-Rose, and stubborn-as-hell-Scorpius he has always been the sensible one. Except now that he is done with school, he has no clue what it is that he wants to do.
Relationships: Albus Severus Potter & Original Female Character(s), Albus Severus Potter & Original Male Character(s), Albus Severus Potter & Rose Weasley, Albus Severus Potter/Original Female Character(s), Scorpius Malfoy & Albus Severus Potter, Scorpius Malfoy & Albus Severus Potter & Rose Weasley, Scorpius Malfoy/Rose Weasley, not the same female character though
Comments: 54
Kudos: 107





	1. getting tired (and I need somewhere to begin)

Al Potter has not been a problem child. Not compared to his siblings (too-cheeky-James and Lily-lacking-regard-for-her-personal-safety) and also not compared to his best friends (raising-the-dead-Rose and stubborn-as-hell-Scorpius). He hasn’t exactly been an angel all the time either—but all in all, he hasn’t made his parents worry too much. Until now.

It _is_ a nice day. They are done with their NEWTS, done with seemingly endless studying. Their families are there to cheer them on (and there’s a little tinge of sadness for who’s missing, but that almost manages to accent the joy of the day –it has been a long time), Rose and Scorpius, as head girl and boy hold a nice speech and the air is filled with the warmth of summer and new beginnings.

The thing is, James and Lily and Scorpius and Rose all have something in common: they know exactly what they are going to do with their lives the nice summer day of their Hogwarts graduation (well, James actually graduated a year before and Lily isn’t going to for another two and Al doesn’t actually know if she has a plan for her future, but knowing her, she probably does).

Al, on the other hand, has no clue. Doesn’t have a clue as Scorpius and Rose finish their (inarguably inspiring) speech, doesn’t have a clue as he hugs his father, doesn’t have a clue as he boards the Hogwarts express for the last time ever and still doesn’t have a clue as he brings his suitcase back to his room in his parents’ house.

Albus declines Scorpius and Rose’ invitation to travel to Australia with them over the summer. He isn’t quite sure why. He likes his friends and he likes the idea of travel, but doing it just doesn’t feel right. It’s something in Rose’s eyes as she invites him—a certain kindness that Al isn’t sure if he wants. It’s not that they pity him, they know him better than that and besides, what is there to pity? But he feels like it is the first step in _their_ future and while he definitely has a part in that, it isn’t _his._ Al can see in their eyes that they don’t quite understand, but that’s alright.

Still lost and with nothing else to do, he starts wandering the city. At day, and at night, too. He’s not doing a lot, really—mostly walking, and sketching the more interesting things he sees. He gets a little bit addicted to it—to the views of the city, to the loneliness in midst of all the people and to the lostness itself, to the point he finds himself craving it.

He does not notice his parents worrying about him first. Of course, his parents have always worried about him—if he eats his greens, if he wears his scarf in the winter, if he is happy and safe. This is a new kind of worry. He is not used to it.

It takes his mother, usually loud and not-at-all subtle about her feelings, sitting him down to talk to realise what’s happening. She has her serious face on and for a moment Al is scared that Something Has Happened. It’s only when she calmly but firmly asks him whatever it was that he had been doing for the past month staying out all night not talking to anyone that he realises it’s him that Is Happening. His parents think that he has gotten involved in something shady. Maybe drugs or something, he isn’t quite sure. He hadn’t even noticed that he hasn’t been talking much.

There isn’t really anything to it—he’s not doing anything, just walking and drawing, but Al doesn’t feel like it’s anything he can explain to his mother the same way he couldn’t explain it to Scorpius and Rose either. He just can’t. For a lack of better ideas he tells her he has gotten a job. The relief in her face feels like a stab in the stomach.

Al doesn’t like to lie, so telling his parents he has a job when he, in fact, does not, is not really something he feels comfortable with. Especially since they are going to find out almost certainly eventually. They are Harry and Ginny Potter and they didn’t win a war by having bad instincts. The only solution to this problem is, of course, to actually get a job.

Al forces Lily to teach him the basic functions of a computer, fakes a CV in a thing called an internet café, and applies for a couple of jobs. He starts in some sort of muggle fast food place but gets fired pretty quickly because he very obviously has no clue what he’s doing. The same thing happens three more times, at a 24 hour super market, a gas station and the internet café he faked his CV at(—it isn’t even that fake, mostly it just says he’s a muggle and even has his real name on it), until he gets a hang of how both muggle jobs and customer service work. His fourth job is at a weird mixture between a bar, a club and a café, in the sense that people go there in the evenings to party and then stay to have breakfast. Like all of his other jobs, it’s firmly in the muggle part of London. Al doesn’t feel like being recognised the same way he doesn’t feel like staying in one place too much or talking to people all day long.

It is a good job, though. Good for Al, at least. It is hard work, for sure, and stressful, and exhausting, but he isn’t lying to his parents anymore and while he doesn’t make a lot of money, it _is_ something he has for himself. Besides, his coworkers are nice (even though Al keeps his distance) and he can take night and evening shifts, which fits his insomnia.

By the end of the summer, Al has settled into a routine. He works at He goes to sleep late at night or in the early morning, gets up in the afternoon, spends the rest of the day straying around various museums and art galleries in both the muggle and the wizarding world before they close and Al goes in for work—either the evening or the night shift, or both. When he doesn’t work at night, he wanders around—not to the clubs and parties, at least not mainly, but to see things, watch people, and to draw.

It’s a good routine, as far as he is concerned. Not a terribly social one, but that wasn’t what he was going for anyway. In any case, his parents seem fine with it, mostly. Less worried. Al tells them a bit about work—the drinks he has learned making, how to count and calculate muggle money quickly—but he is reluctant to share about his wanderings.

But as the end of the summer approaches, he realises that they are expecting for something to change. For him to move on. To start doing whatever it is that he is going to be doing with his life. Al still has no idea.

By now, Scorpius and Rose have come back from their travels, happy and sun-burned and full of plans. Rose starts her studies at the Magical Academy of Medicine, while Scorpius heads into a low-level job at the portkey-office in the ministry that he takes ridiculously seriously.

Al starts taking up more shifts at the _Nightowl,_ some in the mornings and afternoons. They are less busy, but Al actually gets to sleep at night every once in a while and some of the old ladies that come in every Thursday teach him how to knit.

He uses his salary to buy books about art. Art history, techniques, books that depict pictures he likes. He gets himself a cheap muggle camera that he takes onto his nightly walks to capture the things he sees. It’s small stuff—the lights of the pubs falling into the streets, the gasoline shimmering like a rainbow in a puddle—but they have an odd kind of magic to them Al doesn’t quite know how to describe. It’s not enough to sketch them anymore, so he starts painting them, setting the room in his parents’ house up like his art studio.

His parents, who are worrying about him again.

Harry Potter comes into his son’s room at an afternoon around four o’clock. Al’s had a morning and a noon shift, quiet enough for him to sketch his customers on the counter after wiping all the surfaces. His manager doesn’t mind Al drawing when there isn’t anything else to do. Al is a hard worker and by now he knows how to be efficient. He’s a good employee and a little sketch on the notepad for his orders isn’t going to change that. Anyway, Al has gotten his sleep in at night and isn’t due for another shift until tomorrow night, so he is up in his room, painting, when his father comes in.

“Hey, Al.”, he says, standing in the doorway. Al greets him with an absent sort of smile and nod, then goes back to frowning at the line of yellow light in his new painting. He is not quite happy with it, but he isn’t really sure why.

It takes him a while to notice that his dad is still there, must have come in here for a reason.

“Oh”, he says, belatedly, “hi, Dad.”

Harry steps inside, looking around the room a little bit bewildered. It’s not like he never comes into Al’s room, but over the last couple of weeks, it has changed quite a bit. There are his paintings everywhere, canvases standing around leaning against each other and even more pieces of loose paper, printouts of his photos and sketches he uses for reference, art books and post-its holding notes, most of whom would barely make any sense to anyone who isn’t Al at two a.m.. In short, it is a bit of a mess.

Harry chooses to sit on the bed, which is mostly free, due to the fact that Al needs it to sleep there.

“Have you been seeing any of Rose and Scorpius lately?”, he asks.

Al’s mind is still half on the yellow paint. “Sure”, he says. He met up with them last week. Rose is excited about her classes, but stressed out of her mind and Scorpius is clearly being underestimated by his employer, but all in all, they seemed pretty happy. Al startles at the thought and looks his father into the eyes. “Nothing happened to them, did it?”, he asks, alarm clear in his voice.

“No, no, of course not”, Harry says and Al exhales in relief. “I was just wondering if you were keeping up with them.”

Al’s brow twitches. “Of course I have. They’re my best friends.”

It’s true. They are. Al loves them to death. They are the two people he knows best in the world and they know him. He would do anything for them. And yet he hasn’t thought about them much at all lately.

“It’s just that you have been behaving differently lately”, Harry says carefully.

Al has a feeling he knows what he means but he asks anyway. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you haven’t been talking a lot to your mother and I lately. It’s not- You’re an adult now, Al, I don’t want to tell you what you should be doing, but-“

“Do you want me to move out?”, Al asks, suddenly, without knowing he was going to ask it.

His father looks at him, startled. “No, I mean, eventually, but that is not what I was talking about-“

Al doesn’t quite know what he is feeling, but his mouth is quicker than his mind to catch up.

“I have some money saved up from my work at the _Nightowl_ , if you give me a bit of time I can probably find something soon-”

It would be possible. He could rent a cheap place, maybe room with someone. He knows he doesn’t need a lot, just a bit of space to paint and a bed to sleep. A small kitchen.

“No, no!”, Harry says suddenly, almost violently, “I’m not trying to drive you away, Al.”

Al looks up and sees the urgency in his father’s eyes. It’s a kind of desperation he has barely seen there before and it scares him a little.

“I-“ Al stumbles, he doesn’t know what to say.”

“You’ve been pulling back from us.”, Harry says, softly, calmly, in a way that worries Al more than yelling ever could. “Your mother and I, your friends, your brother and sister—we barely know what you’re up to these days.”

“I’m not doing anything bad.”, Al says, not quite sure what the right approach is in this situation, or even what the situation is, really.

Harry holds out a hand and brushes it through Al’s hair. The touch is unexpected and goes through Al like a jolt. Not in a bad way, it’s just that, well. He hasn’t exactly touched a lot of people lately, not casually, not affectionately. He hasn’t noticed, but he notices now.

“I believe you”, Harry says, “You’ve always been such a sensible boy.”

And it’s true, isn’t it? Al knows it in his brain. He has been sensible, doing the right things, holding back the crazy in his friends, knowing moderation. He has been healthy and sensible and the opposite of obsessed and extreme. It’s a good role and he’s been content with it.

“It’s just that even sensible people don’t always see the bad things”, Harry continues, “sometimes they come in disguise and look harmless, or even good.”

“This is not-“, Al starts, but he doesn’t even know what to say. “I’m just working at this café –uh, I guess it’s a bar at night. I mix drinks and take coffee orders.” He gestures wildly around the room. “Then I come home and make some-”, he falls short, his hands pointing at the canvases and the paper sketches around them. “There’s nothing bad about that.”

“There isn’t.”, Harry agrees, “but you’re isolating yourself. I don’t know why you’re doing it and maybe you don’t know that, either, but trust me when I say that nothing good can come from that. I’ve been there before. It’s not a good place and you don’t always realise you’re in it.”

Al crosses his hands in front of his body. “I’m not—sad, you know.”

“I know”, Harry says, quietly, “but maybe you will be.”

Al doesn’t know what to do with that.

“There’s another thing”, Harry adds, “I said that you are an adult and can make your own choices and I stand by that”, he started and Al could feel a headache creeping up his head already.

“There’s nothing wrong with working at the café and doing what you’re doing, I’m sure you’re applying yourself. But the things you are doing now, at this age, how you educate yourself further, the experience you get—that is going to be a base line for the rest of your life. And I don’t think you’ll want to be a waiter or a bartender in the muggle world forever, so I really think you should look into starting something new.”

Al sighs, then presses his hand over his forehead. “It’s not so easy”, he admits, not knowing what else to say.

“I know”, his father answers and Al wonders if he does know. Harry has been an auror all his life and before that he was saving the Wizarding World from an evil wizard, which isn’t that far off, career-wise, if you think about it. “Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

“I promise”, Al says, and well, now he is screwed, because if he says he is gonna do it he actually has to do it. He promised.

“Oh, and please come around to talk a bit to your mother and I.”

Al smiles. “I live here. I come around all the time.”

Harry winks at him. “You know what I mean.”

The next week, Al actively tries to be less of a loner. He actually gets around to visit Scorpius and Rose at their new flat. The place is tiny, but they seem almost disgustingly happy about it and Rose tells him about all the cutesy decorations she’s going to put up. Al has no idea where her sense for aesthetics came from, since neither Uncle Ron nor Aunt Hermione seem to have a knack for it, but he can see the glitter in Scorpius’ eyes as he shuffles around the room that is almost to small for his rollator. Al catches his eye and smiles. As usual, the two of them are disgustingly in love, but Al doesn’t feel any worse for it. Or lonely. In fact, it makes him feel better that they are there for each other and him and that they are working so hard to try and make the world a better place, both in their own way. In that moment, Al has no doubt that it’ll work.

True to his promise, Al tries to think about what it is that he wants to do. It’s not that he hasn’t thought about the topic before—it has just been something he preferred to avoid. Now, he couldn’t do that anymore.

It is a hard thing to think about because in a weird way, Al doesn’t want to be doing anything else. He always thinks he is on the brink of something, just on the verge of discovering something that will change everything. On the other hand, he has no clue what that might be.

So instead of thinking about what he wants to do, he thinks about what he wants to learn. There is so much magic still out there, so much they barely touched on in Hogwarts, so much more he could learn. It seems great, in theory, but when he actually thinks about it, it is hard for Al to pin down something he actually wants to know more about in more than an abstract capacity.

The thoughts of this dilemma keep turning around in his head, until about two weeks later. He is at Flourish & Blotts, picking up a new book on contemporary wizarding artists and skimming through the pages. He’s meeting up with Scorpius for an after-work drink later today, but he still has a little time. Well, for Al, who’s working the evening shift today, it will actually be a before-work drink, but since Scorpius can’t safely drink anything stronger than a butterbeer anyway, it’s not much of a problem.

Al's fingers pause on a page that shows a portrait—in fact, it is a portrait of Albus Dumbledore, or at least a photo of it—the very portrait that graces the wall in Professor McGonagall’s office in Hogwarts. The portrait, Al realizes suddenly, it moves. It’s a weird thought. Al has been around magic portraits and photographs all his life, he knows them, knows about them, but this realization is different. _I want to know how to do this_ , a voice says at the back of his mind. _This is what I want to learn._


	2. the sun is shining every day (but it's far away)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al still doesn't know what the problem is and struggles to find a solution.

The artist’s name is Alistair Fawley. He paints exclusively portraits. His paintings are known for their accuracy He is still alive. 93 years old.

This is what the book tells Al about Alistair Fawley.

This is what the book does not tell Al about Alistair Fawley:

Where he lives. If he takes apprentices.

Al meets Scorpius and Rose for a butterbeer at the _Leaky Cauldron_. They always meet there, more or less. They’re all in London anyway, so it’s just convenient. Also, crucially, its doors are big enough for Scorpius wheelchair if he needs it. That tends to make things easier, even if there are spells.

Al is the first to arrive, so he tells Hannah their order (the usual) and gets them a table. The pub is loud, and the noise bothers Al more than usual. He isn’t sure what it I, but the fullness in his ear makes him jump with nervous energy.

At least he doesn’t have to wait long. Scorpius and Rose arrive together, right on time, of course. Rose would probably rather jump off a building than be late. Scorpius is not using his wheelchair today, leaning on his crutches and Rose’s shoulder for a little bit as they scramble into the booth.

“Hi!”, Rose calls out to Al, her eyes sparkling.

“Hi.”, Al answers, more quietly, smiling at them both, but he can feel the restlessness in his limps.

Scorpius returns his greeting and Al takes the time to check his face. With Scorpius it’s always good to how well he’s doing on a given day. But Al struggles to get a clear picture somehow. He’s on edge.

They fall into conversation easily. Rose tells them about the work she’s doing in the potions lab right now, her eyes glittering even more. Al thought she would like that part, had figured it when she told him about her schedule a couple of weeks ago, but now he can’t quite concentrate on her words. It’s somehow to loud, even though he can hear her speak clearly.

“Are you okay, Al?”, Scorpius asks, interrupting his girlfriend.

Al blinks, then notices his hand that has been tapping frantically on the table for a while now.

“I’m just thinking”, he says, then, not quite satisfied with his answer himself, adds: “I’m trying to figure something out.”

“Care for some help?”, Rose asks.

Al finds it unlikely that Rose or Scorpius could tell him anything at all about Alistair Fawley. Between the three of them, he is usually the one who knows people. He is also the one that knows things about art. Well, at least somewhat. Probably. He doesn’t think that Rose ever had a phase where she figured knowing everything about art was critical to not being exposed as a fraud and a terrible person. She used to get phases like that a lot. It’s a little better now. Then again, the wizarding world is a village. He notices that his thoughts are pulling away and he makes an effort to concentrate. His fingers tap harder.

“Well”, he says anyway, “Do you know anything about Alistair Fawley?”

Rose frowns. “That’s a wizard surname. There is a woman called Fawley that works on magical poisons at St. Mungo’s, but I don’t know anyone called Alistair Fawley. He didn’t go to Hogwarts with us, did he?”

“No, he’s ninety-three”, Al answers automatically. It seems to be getting even louder, even though he can hear his friends speaking now.

Scorpius raises his eyebrows. “You aren’t stalking him, are you?”

“No.”, Al says resolutely, “I just want to know where he lives.”

He looks back up at their skeptical faces and somewhat belatedly puts together that that’s not really an appropriate response.

“He’s a painter.”, he explains reluctantly, “I just want to meet him.” _And convince him to teach me everything he knows._ He’s not sure if he said the last part out loud. He _thinks_ he did. For some reason it’s hard to keep track of his words. He doesn’t repeat it, just to make sure. Repeating things sounds a little crazy. Then again, saying that might also sound a little crazy. He’s not sure, it’s hard to make sense of words. His brain swims.

“But you don’t know anything about him, do you?”

“Is he the kind of artist that does commissions? Or maybe he has an exhibition somewhere?”, Rose suggests, “Artists live off other people paying attention to their work. There must be a way to contact him.”

Al nods slowly. That does make sense. Why hasn’t he thought of that? His gaze slides from Rose back to Scorpius, trying to get a read on his face. It’s hard to look at him, his face keeps wobbling, but eventually Al manages. The way his friend is biting on his lip gives him pause.

“Scorpius!”, he says, almost too loud, “You know something, don’t you.”

Scorpius flushes red. “I shouldn’t say.”, he mumbles, “it’s confidential.”

“Come on!”, Al urges. It comes out more pressingly than he means to. His mind races. What does it mean if Scorpius knows about this guy from work? Because that’s what it has to mean when he’s talking about confidential. What could the portkey offices of all things have to do with Alistair Fawley? He makes his hand into a fist. Maybe the shivering will stop if he does that.

“I’m really not supposed to talk about this stuff”, Scorpius says, shifting in his seat.

“But you can tell me, right?” Maybe Alistair Fawley travels a lot. People usually use portkeys for travelling greater distances. The floo network doesn’t work internationally, and apparating gets difficult with great distance. Al’s butterbeer blurs in front of him, then comes back into focus.

“I-“, Scorpius starts, and Al wants to say something else to convince him, but-

“Stop it, Al!” Rose is almost shouting.

Al blinks. The tension in his fingertips, in his head and his thoughts that has been building up pauses with the sudden interruption.

“You can’t pressure Scorpius like that. It’s his job, you _know_ how important that is to him-“

And Al knows, of course he knows, he knows Scorpius almost better than he knows himself, no, most certainly better than himself, but in that instant the tension is back, drumming against his mind. It’s too much. He needs to- he needs to know, he needs to ask- he needs to-

He stands, abruptly, interrupting Rose. The drumming is so loud he can barely hear her, now anyway. His eyes blink together, and he can feel his hands shaking. Without looking at his friends, he leaves the pub.

It’s autumn and the sky outside is already dark as Al steps out. The air is cool in his lungs and his breathing goes easier. A wave of relief washes over him, or maybe it is just the intense discomfort fading out a bit. New thoughts storm his brain, the rational what-the-fuck-are-you-doing kind, but he closes his eyes and shuts them out for a bit. It seems to work, now, when it didn’t before. Out, in the quiet, lonely cold, he starts to walk.

Inside, Rose is still frozen in her seat. Scorpius takes her hand lightly in his.

“Do you think we should follow him?”, he asks quietly, but she can hear him clearly against the noise of the pub.

Rose shakes her head slightly. “I don’t think-I have no idea”

It’s more of a rhetorical question anyway. Scorpius is not fast enough to seriously follow Al on his crutches and Rose isn’t going to leave him here.

“I’m worried, Rosie”, he says, using that quiet voice of his that always seems louder to her than anything else in the world. He squeezes her hand.

Rose squeezes right back. “Me too.”

* * *

Al is even more distracted the next day at work. He has the night shift again—not his favourite, that’s the evening one, but well enough since he usually can’t sleep anyway. Luckily, it’s not a very busy night. Not very busy being a relative term, as the _Nightowl_ is a pretty popular place to party, even at weeknights.

Al is working behind the bar today, which is to say, he’s not a bartender. He doesn’t have the skills to do that job. No, he’s the guy running around, cleaning surfaces, putting away stray glasses, and making sure there are always enough slices of lemons and ice cubes around. It’s not exactly easy work—there are usually about five things he should be doing at the same time, so he’s on his feet all night and in the morning his back hurts like hell, but he doesn’t really mind. It’s kind of what he likes about his work. At the end of it, he feels like he has been doing something. Also, it keeps his mind occupied and makes him tired enough to sleep well.

But today it doesn’t seem to be quite working. The keeping-his-mind-occupied bit. Al is distracted. He knows that the actual bartender, a brown-haired girl with a strict ponytail and dark red lipstick, has picked up on that as well.

“I need some more ice over here, Al!”, she calls out over the music.

Al winces. That shouldn’t happen. At least not on a relatively slow night.

“Be right there!”, he calls back and scrambles to get to the freezer.

They get a bit of a break at around four o’clock. There is a couple snogging in a corner and a group of friends dancing enthusiastically, but nobody to occupy the bar. Most people have either gone home or moved on for the night. Al knows that some of them will be back for breakfast. The _Nightowl_ is that kind of place.

Al is wiping the top of the bar and the bartender comes over to help him. For a minute, they work in quiet tandem. Well, it’s not quite quiet—the playlist that’s always on repeat has reached “What’s New Pussycat?” for what feels like the millionth time. Al has no idea why that song is even on there. It doesn’t really feel appropriate for the _Nightowl_ to be perfectly honest.

But then the bartender turns around towards him looking at him with that practised smile of hers that is usually reserved for customers she needs to charm to buy more drinks. To come back to the _Nightowl_. It says something like: “I get you, I’m your buddy, trust me with secrets.” Well, or at least with your night.

Al, who has seen it directed at literally hundreds of completely different people, is instantly suspicious.

“So, Al”, she says, and Al realises that even though they work together all the time he doesn’t actually know what her name is. Awkward. Especially since she obviously knows his. “What’s up with your vibe today?”

Al shrugs. He’s not actually sure what that means, precisely, Muggles have weird slang (or maybe it’s just that she specifically talks weirdly, he’s not sure). “Oh, you know, the usual. Life.”

He rags his brain for her name. He still has no clue. Wait—she should have a name tag. Al doesn’t have one, because customers don’t usually talk to him, but she definitely does. He searches her chest for it with his eyes.

“Is that so?”, she asks.

There it is. _Catherine._ Al is almost pleased with himself, until-

“Hey, are you staring at my boobs?”

Al blinks. He can feel his cheeks redden and his eyes shoot back up to meet hers. “No, I wasn’t, I swear”, he ensures her frantically. Crap, did he make her uncomfortable? “I would never, that’s really inappropriate, I’m not”, he swallows, “I’m not that kind of guy, really.”

She makes a hand gesture. “You’re not?”

“No?”, Al asks. It sounds stupid, even to him. When did he get so bad with people? “I know that you often have people being creeps and hitting on you weirdly, you shouldn’t get it from you colleagues, too. I really wasn’t trying to do that.”

She raises an eyebrow. He might have emphasized the _really_ too much. Al cringes.

“Not that you aren’t, uh, nice-” He cringes even harder. At this point it really can’t get any worse, can it?

“I’ll just stop talking.”, he concludes.

The corner of Catherine’s lip flickers up. “It’s fine, I get what you mean.” She pauses. “What _were_ you looking at, though? Not like there’s a lot else around to see.”

Al feels himself blush even harder. He’d rather not say anything, but now he has to. She’ll never want to work with him again. Which is a shame, because she’s rather competent and matches his rhythm.

“Your name tag”, he confesses.

She raises her eyebrows even higher. “You forgot my name?”

“I- I’m bad with names.”, he offers as an explanation. It’s only half-true. He’s never been before, but now, somehow, he seems to be now. “I’m sorry”, he adds, “I’ll try to remember now, Catherine.”

Catherine frowns. “It’s fine. You can call me Cath, though. Everyone does.”

Al tries a smile. “Cath, then.”

She nods, smiling. “Do you know that I’ve never heard you say so many words in a row before?”

Al shrugs again. “I guess I’m not very chatty.”

“That’s an understatement.”, Cath argues. “You are extremely elusive and mysterious.”

Al can’t help but laugh. “I’m not mysterious.”

“You so are! You’re all broody and quiet, and nobody has any solid gossip on you.”

Now it’s Al who raises his eyebrows. “That’s because there’s nothing to know about me.” _Except for the fact that he’s a wizard._

“That’s what they all say, and then they’re pregnant.”

Al blinks. “ _What?”_

“Forget it”, she says, “You know what, as compensation for you forgetting my name, I get to ask you a question.”

“A question?”

“Yeah, any question.”

“You could just ask me a question without it being a compensation.”

“Yeah, but this way, you _have_ to give me a proper answer.”

Al considers this. Obviously he can’t tell her anything about magic, but he highly doubts she’s going to ask him whether he can transform the bar stool into a pig or anything like that.

“I guess…”, he agrees reluctantly.

“Yes!”, she says, thrusting her fist into the air.

“So…?”, Al asks.

“What?”

“What’s your question?”

She pauses. “Give me a moment to think.”

“Sure.”, Al says, wondering why she even wants to play this game if she hasn’t actually thought of a question.

They are quiet for a while, only Al’s fingers tapping on top of the bar.

Then the friend group comes over and gets a round of drinks and they are busy again.

It’s not the until the end of their shift that they get enough time to talk. Al’s already changed out of his uniform, getting ready to go home when she approaches him again in the staff room.

She catches him around the wrist.

“What was it that distracted you so much today?”

Al sighs. “Is that your question?”

She nods.

He sits down on one of the cheap plastic stools. She mirrors his motion, sitting down across from him.

“It’s kind of a lot of things.”, Al says.

She gestures him to go on. He actually doesn’t quite know what he is supposed to tell her. He could always lie, of course, but somehow, he doesn’t want to. Also, he’s way too tired for that kind of business.

“Well, I’m kind of looking for something. And I can’t quite figure out how to find it.”

“Can you be any less vague?”

“I’d rather not?”, Al says, but it comes out as a question.

“Well, suck it up, we made a deal. What are you looking for?”

“Well”, Al says, then he thinks _Screw it,_ “I paint. You know, as a hobby. Also as a way to be less-“ His fingers drum against the top of the bar harder. “-less anxious, I guess. But I can’t quite get it right. I just feel like there’s something else I have to do, or learn or whatever. And that would-“ He struggles with words. “it would help”

“Damn.”, Cath says, “Carol bet you were a tortured artist. I never would have thought.”

“I’m not a tortured artist. I’m just a nerd.” Al frowns. “Wait, did you bet on my personal life?"

“As I said. Broody. Elusive.”

“…sure.”

They sit there for a moment. Al thinks that she must be as exhausted as him, if not more and for a moment they bathe in that shared emotion. There is something soothing in it.

“I’m not gonna tell Carol, if you don’t want me to”, Cath says, eventually, “it’s not really my place”

Al shrugs. “Do you think she’ll pester me to show her my art?”

Cath considers this. “I don’t know. Maybe. Probably.”

“Then don’t tell her.”

“You’re so not as polite as you pretend to be!”, she says, but she doesn’t sound very outraged.

Al feels like he should fight this, but he’s frankly to exhausted.

“I just don’t like to talk to people too much.”

“I gathered.”

There’s another pause.

“Is that all? Your artist stuff?”

“What do you mean?”

“The reason you were distracted. You said it’s many things”

“Was it that bad?”

“No, it was fine. You’re just pretty efficient usually. Now stop avoiding the question.”

Al sighs again. “I guess I had a fight with my best friend.”

“I see.”, she says, and Al is almost surprised she doesn’t pry further.

There’s another pause.

“Will you be okay?”, she asks eventually.

The question somehow warms his heart. This girl doesn’t even know him.

“It’ll be fine.”, he says.

They sit there together for another five minutes, then Al gets up on his feet. They feel like they weigh a hundred pounds.

“Thank you.”, he says somewhat awkwardly as he gathers his stuff. She throws him a tired smile. “See you.”

Al nods, makes an awkward half-wave and goes home.

_He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine._

The words follow him all the way home, but they don’t quite reach over his doorstep so he can keep them in with him.

* * *

In the end, Al finds Alistair Fawley purely by coincidence.

He does take Rose’s advice and goes to the M.Ars-Gallery. It’s the only art gallery in the magical part of London. There aren’t a whole lot of wizard artists for some reason. Maybe because there aren’t that many wizards in general, so there isn’t that much of an appeal to showing your work to such a tiny audience.

The gallery is almost empty when Al comes in. There aren’t a lot of employees anyway, but today it seems like Cassie McKinnon is the only one in. Al remembers her from Hogwarts, even though she must be at least five or six years older than him. He isn’t quite sure what her actual job here is—maybe tour guide?—but she seems to do everything, from advising visitors to cleaning, to manning the front desk. She’s also extremely friendly, which is usually quite unfortunate because Al doesn’t want to talk to people, whereas friendly people like her _always_ want to talk to everyone.

Al briefly remembers that he used to consider himself a friendly person. He pushes the thought away.

Fortunately, today, her friendliness comes in handy. Al needs information.

He knows that there are no portraits of Fawley’s at the gallery. The thing about portraits is that they are usually made for a certain place, a family home, an official building. Those kinds of pictures don’t end up in galleries all that much, especially if they aren’t that old.

But if she works here, McKinnon’s probably involved in the wizarding art scene (unlike Al, who just lurks around the corners), so she might know something.

But their conversation proves disappointing. While McKinnon is impressed with Fawley, she doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about him. “People say he likes to keep to himself.”, she tells Al conspiratorially.

Wow. He certainly would never have guessed _that._

Al finds an excuse to disentangle himself from the conversation and leaves the M.ars. A little bit lost, he wanders down Diagon Alley, no real clue what to do with himself.

His foot bumps against a stone and Al kicks it. A flood of frustration wells up in him. What is he supposed to do now? What _is_ he even doing? He has no clue. He can’t figure out anything and on top of that, he fought with his two best friends in the world.

Maybe he should apologise. The thought stops Al in his tracks. It gives his frustration and the weird wild energy in hi veins a direction. Suddenly he wants to find the nearest fireplace so he can floo Scorpius right now. He turns around on his heel and marches towards the _Leaky Cauldron_.

He knows he can use the fireplace there, but he has to ask Hannah first. It is busy for a Wednesday morning, but maybe Al only thinks that because he is used to the busy and quiet periods of the _Nightowl_. The _Leaky Cauldron_ is always busy.

Al’s foot taps against the ground as he waits and his gaze glides over the room. The tables, the customers and their drinks, the bar, the lonely newspaper left on the counter.

He squints and looks again. _Seriously?_

The thing is, Al doesn’t read newspapers. He really doesn’t. It’s a rule he set for himself when he was twelve years old and he’s sorely regretted it basically every time he’s ever broken it. When your last name is Potter, it just adds to your general sanity if you _don’t_ know what people gossip about. Al’s dad, of course, doesn’t care much about it—Al’s pretty sure they dished out all the really mean stuff in his youth and leave him alone nowadays, if only because he is pretty much universally adored—but he knows that his mother gets a mean dig every once in a while, if not from the _Daily Prophet_ (but only because she works there), and so do Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione. Also, all of their cousins. They mostly leave the older ones alone, especially now that there are Al and his siblings to report on, but every one of them has dealt with it at least at some point. Rose used to be majorly messed up about it (she was also a favourite target for whatever reason), but she’s much better now.

Anyway, Al equals staying away from newspapers. Especially tabloids. _Especially_ when he knows they feature him or his family. Usually.

But there is just something awfully ironic about blatant falseness of the headline.

_Albus Potter—rapidly rising up the ranks in the ministry!_

I mean, come on. He graduated like, what, four months ago. That’s not enough to rise any ranks. Not to mention he doesn’t even work at the ministry. Where the hell _do_ they get their information from?

Al can’t help but pick the thing up, if alone to find that out.

It’s not worth it. They don’t even really claim any sources, just quote two confused Fifth-Years Al used to tutor in Muggle Studies and Transfiguration. They tell them that he is “good at Muggle Studies and Transfiguration”. Frankly, it’s ridiculous. Anyone with critical thinking skills (or any personal knowledge of Al) can tell that they’re pulling the whole article out of their asses.

Still, the article leaves a bad taste in the back of Al’s throat. He’s not like that. Not that Al. He never really wanted to be, to be fair, but right now… He wonders what they would think if they knew that he worked part time at a muggle café/bar at nights and wandered around London the rest of the time. What _is_ he doing? Nothing unique or useful, certainly. 

His fingers brush over the rest of the pages, not really paying attention to their contents. Until suddenly, he does.

He blinks. Surely it can’t be. But that’s what it says, right there.

_Alistair Fawley,  
sketches and portraits for your love letters_

And an address below. It’s in London—it’s close.

 _Sketches and portraits for your love letters._ It’s ridiculous. But there it is. This is what he’s been looking for.

Al smiles, puts the tabloid in his bag, and leaves the _Leaky Cauldron._

* * *

Al almost jumps out of his skin at work waiting to be done for the day. He can’t wait to go visit Alistair Fawley. He isn’t sure why, he doesn’t even know if the guy will even talk to him, but it just feels like he’s finally getting somewhere.

He knows that he’s being skittish and his co-worker (not Cath, but another girl the same age, maybe Carol?) notices as well. She however doesn’t try to talk to him about it, and Al is thankful that he doesn’t have to avoid any questions.

He’s caught the rare late afternoon shift and by the time he’s done it’s too late to reasonably visit anyone who’s not a very close friend and Al wants to make a good impression, so he goes home instead. He should get a good night’s sleep for once.

He meets his father on the stairs of their house. He has that glitter in his eyes and Al mentally braces himself for another dad-conversation. That is what he has been dubbing them. The conversations his dad seems to be wanting to have all the time now—about how Al is feeling, how his day was, what he has been doing. If everything is okay. What is up with that?

“Hey, Al.”, his father says.

“Hi, dad”, Al mumbles. He really doesn’t want to talk. His mind is so full and his fingers are charged with restless energy. He just wants to be alone, work this out for himself.

“Is everything alright?”, Harry asks, just as Al predicted, “You look tired.”

“It’s just been a long day.”, Al says and suddenly notices that his father does as well. Looks tired, that is. More like exhausted, actually. It’s weird because Al is well-acquainted with that look. His father is the Head of the Auror Bureau, has been for as long as Al’s been alive. He’d always gone on secret missions, working late at times, sometimes for days in a row. But recently, he hasn’t, Al realises. He knows, because his father has been here in the evenings. All the time. More than Al has, to be precise. Why is he so tired, then? Has he been worrying about Al that much? That can’t be it, right?

“Work’s been busy?”, Harry asks.

“Not really”, Al says, because he still doesn’t like lying to his parents, “we don’t really get that much business in the afternoons.”

Harry nods, but doesn’t say anything and Al feels the need to add something, to make this feel like an actual conversation, not an interrogation.

“I’ve been trying to do the thing you told me.”, he says hesitantly, “trying to figure out a next step for myself.”

Harry smiles at him, wide, the exhaustion fading from his eyes. “Really? That’s great, Al.”

“Yeah.”, Al says, “I guess it is.” He pauses. “I’m not sure if it’ll work out. I’ll tell you about it when I know, alright?”

Harry’s smile grows softer. “Of course.”

They are pretty much the same height—not tiny, but also not very tall for a man—but Harry is further up on the stairs which is why he can reach down to ruffle Al’s hair like he used to do when Al was just a little boy. Al feels the touch through his body.

He looks up at his father, remembers years of comfort and tears and smiles, what he told him when he boarded the Hogwarts Express the very first time. Al doesn’t feel very brave right now. Well, he never did end up in Gryffindor. He doesn’t feel very smart, either.

He’s looked at his father a million times. Those tired eyes, the greying hair. Al can feel something in the back of his throat, a feeling he can’t quite explain or describe.

“Dad”, he says, without knowing what he wants to ask. “Are you- Do you- Is everything okay?”, he finally ends up asking. It feels lame, not enough, though he’s not sure what it is that he wanted to ask.

“Of course.”, his father replies, “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Al nods. Then he slips past his father, up the stairs to his room. The moment is over.

“Al!”, his father calls after him, “Did you and Scorpius make up?”

Al scowls, annoyed. Who told him about that? It sure as hell wasn’t Al.

No matter what his parents say, he has to move out of here as soon as possible.

He decides not to grace the question with an answer and settles in for a fitful night instead.


	3. not perfect (but it's getting closer)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al rights a few wrongs, figures out a few things and still has no clue what he's doing.

Al wakes up early and tired, but there is no point in going back to bed. He can tell by the minute the memories from the past day start floating back in. It gives him an instant headache, a rush of guilt, but also one of determination. He looks around his bedroom. He wants to get out of here.

He doesn’t bother with breakfast—he used to eat it almost religiously, but that was back when he was a growing boy. Instead, he gets dressed differently five different times (which is a challenge in itself, since Al basically only owns his school robes, dress robes from back when their family friend Teddy Lupin married their cousin Victoire, five pairs of jeans and a few t-shirts and hoodies, some of them with Ravenclaw or Hogwarts prints on them. Oh, and years worth of Christmas jumpers from his grandma). By the fifth time he gives up. It’s not a date, for Merlin’s sake!

He grabs his bag and pushes his sketch book and pencils in—for comfort if for nothing else. He already has his wand and his trusted map of London and he can’t think of anything else he might need. Still, he stands there for almost five minutes wracking his brain. This is important. He wants to be prepared, but at the same time he just wants to get it over with.

In the end, he leaves the house much like he usually does—with his usual clothes, his usual bag, with its usual contents. It’s even the usual weather—dull and grey, there really isn’t anything to that.

There might be something ironic to it, Al thinks, or maybe poetic that he goes out like this to change his life—literally the same way he goes out every day. Well, maybe a little earlier, but still. Al doesn’t dwell on it—he’s not a poetical person and really, he’d rather not think about it.

He’s become quite good at navigating London over the past months and it takes him little time to find the block of flats Alistair Fawley supposedly lives in. It’s an older building with a nice architecture, close to Charing Cross Road, which means it’s close to the _Leaky Cauldron_ and Diagon Alley, but as Al stands in front of it, it seems a bit run-down.

The walk there is quite long, but not unmanageable, especially not to Al, who is used to walking around. Walking has cleared his head as it always does, taken away the worst of his headache, but as he comes to a stop by the doorbells for the different flats, the sight of them swims in front of his eyes. Al waits until the moment passes then brings his hand up to the one with the name _Fawley_ written next to it in sparkling green ink. His hand shakes, maybe due to his nervousness, maybe due to whatever has been wrong with him lately, but he presses the button regardless.

He can hear the doorbell going off, then—nothing.

Al waits a minute, then another one. When nothing happens, he looks at his map, then the address in the stupid tabloid, then the sign next to the bell, but no, he’s at the right place. Must be.

Hesitantly, he brings his hand back up again to the doorbell and rings it. Again.

This time he only waits about half a minute, which is still a long time to awkwardly stand in front of a door. Then a middle-aged woman emerges from the door and holds it open to him, smiling widely.

Al smiles back at her, going inside even though he’s not sure if he should. The person he’s here to see hasn’t let him in, but it seems awkward not to step in anyway.

She’s holding a big shopping bag and greets him as if he were here everyday. Al nods at her and hopes he doesn’t look too creepy. For lack of a better idea, he starts ascending the stairs. The house seems a little less run-down from the inside, but still old judging from the ornamentals of the stairs. Al’s not sure he dislikes it per se, it just seems less modern than most of the muggle places he knows. It seems old enough to be magic (or old-fashioned enough), though he can sense that it isn’t. This house was built by muggles and most of its inhabitants probably are muggles as well.

But at least one of them isn’t.

Alistair Fawley lives on the fourth (and highest) floor of the building. There are two flats on this floor, as on all the others. One of them has a doormat out and shoes and straw mice that are probably supposed to serve as a decoration. The other one is completely blank, safe for a bright pink post-it that says: “Knock thrice, then whistle.”

Al stares at the post it. He knocks the door three times, then whistles.

The door springs open instantly, revealing an old man wearing flannel pyjamas.

Before Al’s brain can catch up with what’s happening, he’s already opened his mouth: “What do people do if they can’t whistle?”

The man yawns. “Find a pipe.”, he says. His voice is surprisingly deep for such a small man. He’s almost a head smaller than Al, which is not exactly tiny like Professor Flitwick, but falls definitely into the category of small.

“I see.”, Al says. He has no clue what he is supposed to do. He had such a good plan, but he’s gone and messed it up within a second.

They stand there for a moment looking at each other. Al feels like he is being seized up, but he can’t help but stare back. This is the man he’s been looking for. Maybe a bit older than on the pictures, but yes, definitely the guy.

He has messy white-grey hair (like Al’s, but maybe in his case it’s just a bedhead) and seems a little too thin the way old people sometimes do, but not exactly weak. It feels like there is a frightening sort of energy to him. Magic.

“You’re not a love-struck maiden.”, Alistair Fawley states.

“I’m not?”, Al asks, though he has no idea why he phrases it as a question.

“Are you?”

“Well, no.”

“Then you must be a journalist. Or worse, a curator.” He sighs. “I really didn’t want to obliviate anyone this early in the morning. But you types are never as accommodating as to show up at a reasonable hour.”

Al stares. “It’s nine o’clock.”, he says, eventually.

“As I was saying, basically still the middle of the night. In any case, I do not wish to be disturbed by you and your kind. I’m an old man and I like my peace. I have no interest in galleries and interviews, so if you would be kind enough-“

“I’m not a journalist.”, Al interrupts him, finally having regained his ability to speak. “Also not a curator.”, he adds.

“Are you sure?” Alistair Fawley looks at him again, this time even more intensely. He has dark blue eyes, way too young and attentive in his old face. “Well you do seem a bit too young for that. But then again, it is hard to tell with you youths.”

“I’m pretty sure.”, Al says. The situation is frankly to weird for him to be much nervous.

Fawley sighs again. “Well, I guess then, come on in.”

Al steps into the flat behind the painter. It’s not huge, but not really small either—there is a tiny hall, but Fawley gestures for him to keep his shoes on. The hall leads to what is probably supposed to be a living room, but it is instead covered in art supplies, sketch boards, canvases, paint. Al can immediately see that there must be some sort of system to it, even though he can’t fathom what it is.

Fawley moves through it without even looking right into another room—a kitchen. It is tiny and covered in old flowery tiles from an age where interior decorators apparently had no taste, but it seems comfortable enough. A bit dusty maybe, but Al doesn’t mind. He’s not exactly fussy about that sort of thing.

They sit down at the table. For a few seconds, but certainly long enough to make it somewhat uncomfortable, nobody says anything. Fawley is now looking directly in Al’s eyes. His gaze is scary in the way that it seems to scan all his secrets, but at the same time, Al can’t look away. He is fascinated.

That is

, until his vision blacks out again and he has to grip the edges of the table to keep himself upright. _Oh. It’s getting worse._

Fawley must notice, but he doesn’t comment on it.

“So”, he says instead, “why not start with introductions? I’m Al Fawley and what is your name, young man?”

“I’m Al.”, Al says, “I mean, my name is also Al.”

The man’s eyebrows quirk up. He has very bushy eyebrows, which enhances the effect. “What a nice coincidence!”

Al didn’t even consider that Alistair Fawley might also go by Al. It really is funny in a way.

“It is.” He pauses. “Al Potter.” He almost didn’t want to say it. Not that he is ashamed of his father or anyone else in his family it’s just that— Well, he so rarely meets someone who doesn’t already know who he is and a couple of trivial facts about him.

“Oh”, Fawley says, “Of course, I can see the resemblance.”

Al waits for him to say something else, but he just moves on.

“Well then, Al Potter. Why is it that you’ve come here?” His eyes gaze over Al’s fingers. Al only now realises that they have been tapping on the edge of the table like crazy and forces himself to stop, even though it makes him even more uneasy.

“I figure it’s not because you are lovesick and want me to paint something for your sweetheart, or is it?”

Al shakes his head violently. “No, I-“, he starts, but the shaking seems to have been too much for his head and his vision goes black again. He’s glad he’s already sitting down, otherwise he probably would have keeled over or something equally embarrassing.

“You’re a wizard artist.”, he gets out eventually, a bit short of breath, though he is not really sure why, “you make your portraits and they are magical. They move and they have personalities and even by looking at the photographs I can tell that they are full of magic-” He stops himself before he can say anything that sounds too creepy. “I want to—well, I thought I might—maybe you could help me learn to make that kind of art.”

Al’s eyes dart down to the table. This is the moment. But he can’t bear not seeing, so he looks back up. The look in Fawley’s eyes is indecipherable.

“Well, Al”, he says, “You are a wizard, aren’t you?”

Al blinks. “Of course.”

A hint of a smile flickers over Fawley’s face. “And are you an artist?”

It sounds like a trick question, but Al can’t figure out what the trick is. “I, uh, yeah, I think so.”

“You don’t sound very sure about that. You do make art?”

Al nods. “I do, it’s just-“

“It doesn’t matter”, Fawley says, “If you make art, you are an artist. If you are a wizard—or a witch, of course—your art is going to be magic. It’s in you, you couldn’t change it if you wanted to.”

Al’s fingers grip the table again, for an entirely different reason. “It’s not that simple-“

“It really is.”

“It never turns out the way I want it to-“

“I doubt I could help you with that.”

“Why?”

“Well, do you think, any portrait ever turns out the way I want it to?”

“Um, well. They look fine to me?”, Al replies, dumbfounded.

“Of course they do, you didn’t make them.” Fawley stands up abruptly and Al hurries to do the same. But as soon as he takes a step, his vision fades out again and he has to raise his hands to keep his balance. When his sight comes back, he can see that they are shivering.

Fawley is looking back at him. Even if he ignored it before, he’s surly seen it now. It makes Al uncomfortable. He hasn’t been feeling great lately, but it’s not a big deal.

“I want to show you something”, Fawley says, “Come along”

Al follows him, relieved he’s not being kicked out quite yet. Even if Fawley is not going to teach him—and by now it’s quite clear that he won’t it’s amazing to be here, just to see all of this, to maybe get a piece of advice-

They make their way back to the living-room-slash-art-room and Fawley snatches up a sketch book. The page he flips open has a very detailed sketch of a girl on it. She’s the generic kind of pretty, not really the interesting thing about the sketch for sure.

“That’s the concept for a drawing I’m making for one of my lovesick customers”, Fawley explains.

“A guy wants a picture of the girl he’s in love with?” That would be kind of creepy.

“No, she wants to give it to him so he doesn’t forget about her. It’s all very romantic—anyway, I’m going to have to start over.”

Al’s eyes flicker, surprised. “It’s a good drawing.” But he can already see what Fawley means. There is something not quite right.

“Well, I have been at this for quite some time.” Fawley’s voice is impatient. “But can you see why I’ll have to tear it up anyway?”

Al knits his brows together and looks closer. It really is a good drawing, showing even the tiniest details of her face, but somehow—“The perspective is wrong”, he says finally, “It looks like you’re looking at her from two sides at once.”

Fawley manages to look pleased and disgruntled at the same time. “That it is. I’ve been doing this for so long, but I still manage to make such a basic mistake. It’s like I painted my first portrait yesterday.” He shakes his head vigorously, as if to dismiss ghosts flying around it.

Al looks at the drawing again. It _is_ a good drawing. Even though the perspective is wrong, the shadowing is incredible and the details exact. But the spark is gone.

“It could just have a dodgy perspective”, Al points out, “people do that.”

“They do”, Fawley agrees, “but it’s not my vision. It’s not enough for it to be good—it needs to reflect what I see.”

“I see”, Al says, but he’s not sure he does.

Fawley is still looking at the picture.

“How did you want me to help you, anyway?”, he asks, and Al almost jumps.

“Well”, Al says, feeling very stupid, “I thought I could work for you, I don’t know, help out, run errands, basically anything you needed, and then I could pick up on the things you are doing and you could teach me a bit.”

“I see”, Fawley says, finally turning around to face Al, “I don’t really have enough money to pay you any kind of reasonable salary, so you should probably keep whatever job you have, so you can have some money. I suppose I could provide for food and art supplies, but-“

“Wait a minute”, Al says, only just catching up, “so we are doing this?”

Fawley raises his eyebrows. “Is that not what you wanted?”

“No, it’s just, I figured, well, it doesn’t matter now…”

“Well, you don’t really leave me that much of a choice showing up here…” He shakes his head and mutters something Al can’t quite make out. He clears his throat. “As I was saying, is there anything you need to support yourself that we need to work out?”

“I need a place to live”, Al blurts out. He flushes. That is not the right thing to say. But it is kind of true. “I mean, I’m not homeless, but I kind of do want to move out…”

The amusement in Fawley’s voice is clear. “I do have another room I could clean up for you. It’s not very big, but if you don’t mind, you could live here as compensation for the work.”

“I could?”

“As I said, it’s not very generous.”

“I don’t need a lot”, Al says and realises it’s true. The only thing he’s using his room at his parents’ house is to sleep and for his art. “I do have a job, too, so that’s not going to be a problem…”

“Well then”, Fawley says, smiling, “welcome home!”

Fawley’s other room really doesn’t have a lot in it, just enough space for a bed and a closet Al conjures from his room at home after they clear out the stock of blank canvases that Fawley had been storing there.

It doesn’t take them to finish. Fawley shakes his head just barely and glances at the clock. It’s just turned ten a.m..

“What now?”, Al asks.

“I don’t know about you, but I have been dragged out of bed way to early today, so I just intend to turn back there and get another few hours of sleep.” With that, he turns and leaves Al alone in his new room.

Without much else to do, Al gets into his bed and slips into sleep instantly.

* * *

Al wakes up dizzy and disoriented. His head hurts and there is a weird feeling in his stomach he can’t quite identify. He sits up and raises hand to touch his forehead. It takes a moment until he remembers where he is. At Alistair Fawley’s. _Home,_ he reminds himself. It doesn’t feel quite true yet, a bit like a dream. _Wait, what time is it?_

The room can’t reasonably be described as bright, but enough sun comes in through the window that it’s clear it’s at least early afternoon.

Al rushes to get up, ignoring the black spots in his vision and walks out into the art room, almost running into a canvas. He doesn’t know all the edges and positions in this flat yet like he does at—in his parents’ house, so he actually needs to see to walk. He blinks and regains his sight.

Fawley’s sitting on the other side of the room, looking intently at a photograph. Probably a reference given to him by one of his customers. Al tries to think of a way to get his attention, to make his presence known—it only seems polite, he almost feels like an intruder—then on the other hand, wouldn’t it be better to just leave him alone? Not disturb him while he’s working? Al can’t decide, so for a few seconds he just stands there. Then Fawley looks up.

“Good, you’re up”, he says and Al almost blushes. He must look so lazy, coming here to work and falling asleep right away for who knows how long.

“What time is it?”, he asks.

Fawley looks at his wristwatch. “Half past three.”

Now Al is definitely blushing. “I’m sorry”, he mumbles.

“What for?” Fawley has gone back to staring at the photograph, his right hand waving in a dismissive gesture. “Come here, I have some correspondence for you to look through.”

Al nods vigorously and walks toward him, maybe a little too fast. His headache flares up, but Al has gotten pretty good at ignoring those. He slows his pace, which is probably good, because he has to be careful to not knock anything down, anyway.

Fawley nods at a small pile of paper on the edge of a table that is otherwise covered in art supplies. Al picks it up and scans through it. It’s a mixture of wizarding and muggle mail, all of it unopened. The first one dates back to the beginning of the month.

“Some of those are pretty old”, Al comments carefully.

“I have a bad habit of not opening my mail. It always seems to amount to more work for me in the end.” He frowns. “Or bills. Anyway, now I guess I can make you do it.”

“Sure”, Al says, his enthusiasm real. He wasn’t lying when he said he was willing to make himself useful. And as far as tasks go, checking the mail isn’t too bad.

It takes Al about half an hour to sort through all of the letters and divide them into different piles. Bills, commissions (from a mixture of love-sick teenagers and men in midlife-crisis, or so it seems to Al), fan mail, and miscellaneous (one letter about bananas Al can’t make sense of and a complaint about the extremely foul mouth of one of Fawley’s paintings).

He presents them to Fawley, who is still staring at the picture, barely moving.

Fawley sighs, looking at them. “Leave the fan mail there, I’ll read it eventually”, he instructs, “as for the commissions, would you just pick one for me to do?”

“Any one of them?”

“Well, I guess I can still do the others afterwards, can’t I?”

“Well, probably…” _Unless the middle-aged men have all gotten over their midlife-crises by then._

“And the bills, I trust you will have some business at Diagon Alley soon anyway. I’ll just give you my Gringotts keys and you can pay them for me then.”

Al stares up at him. “You can’t just give me your Gringotts keys!”

Fawley’s gaze doesn’t leave the photograph. Al is really wondering what is left there to stare at that he hasn’t already seen by now.

“I can’t?”

“You just met me today!”

“So?”

For the first time Al considers that Fawley might be insane. Or at least in the beginning stages from dementia. He _is_ quite old, even if wizards typically live longer than muggles.

“I could just rob you of all your money”, he explains, somewhat awkwardly.

“Will you?”

“Of course not!”

“Then there really isn’t a problem, is there?”

Al doesn’t know what to say. What if Fawley really does suffer from dementia? He’s living here all on his own. Does he have any relatives who check up on him? Neighbors? Apparently, he only opens his mail once in every two months or so. What if he forgets to turn off the stove after cooking and dies in a house fire? Wait, does he cook?

“Have you eaten anything yet?”, Al asks, somewhat abruptly.

Only now does Fawley turn his head to look at him. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t.”

Al isn’t sure why, but somehow the old man looks pleased.

“Would it be alright- Do you want me to cook something?”, Al asks. He’s an alright cook. His parents made sure of that. “It’s a life skill”, his father always says his expression telling a story that Al probably doesn’t want to know in detail.

“That would be lovely.”, Fawley says, smiling.

Al gets to work.

* * *

Over the course of the week, Al falls into a rhythm at Alistair Fawley’s flat. He still goes to work at the _Nightowl_ , of course, mostly in the evenings and at night, though he does get day shifts every once in a while. After that, he goes home and falls into bed—Fawley himself seems to be a night owl and doesn’t mind Al sleeping in. Depending on whether he got the evening or the night shift, Al wakes up either at noon or in the early afternoon. Then he takes care of Fawley’s affairs and tries his best to keep him alive.

It really doesn’t seem like there is anyone else to check up on the old man and with the way he seems to handle himself, Al can’t help but worry. Someone else but him might take advantage of the man, or he might forget to eat, or not pay his electricity bill and be evicted.

Al takes it upon himself to try and prepare at least one warm meal a day and two more that aren’t, and when he goes to Diagon Alley to pay Fawley’s bills, he picks up another book on household charms, in an effort to keep the flat clean. He isn’t quite sure how far he can go until Fawley feels he’s being patronized and kicks Al out headlong, but when he doesn’t seem bothered by Al’s mother hen tendencies, Al starts taking care of groceries as well. (With Fawley’s money, to be fair, but he does have explicit permission, even though the goblins scowl at the form every time they see Al comes to get some money before they let him access the vault.)

He’s on his way back from one of these grocery trips when he meets the lady from across the hall in the stairway. It’s the woman that let him in the door the first time he came here a week ago.

“Hello!” She smiles at him brightly. Al isn’t sure what he has done to deserve her apparent enthusiasm upon meeting him. “I don’t believe I have introduced myself yet. My name is Elizabeth Marlow, I live right across here.” She gestures at her door.

“Al.” Al takes her extended hand and shakes it. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you, dear. How lovely, a family name, is it?”

“Something like that”, Al replies, confused. There’s no way Elizabeth could possibly know his family, could she? And even if she did, the comment doesn’t make any sense.

“I find it admirable that a young man like you would come to live with an elderly relative these days. My ex-husband always used to say that kids these days don’t respect their elders, but he was never to smart about these things. Family will always be important.”

 _Oh._ She obviously thinks they are related. Al tries to think of a way to explain to her that they, in fact, aren’t, but she has already finished her small speech.

“It was very nice to meet you, but I shouldn’t hold you up, you should get your milk into the fridge! In any case, the two of you should come over for tea sometime soon, so we can meet properly.”

“For sure”, Al gets out, before she vanishes back into her flat. What a weird situatuon. But she does seem like a very nice lady.

He brings the groceries in and starts putting them away, all the while telling Fawley about the encounter.

“She thought Al was a family name that I somehow inherited from you.”

“I didn’t think we look that much alike”, Fawley replies dryly. He pauses, putting another stroke of paint on his newest painting. “So we will be having tea with her sometime. Don’t worry, Mrs. Marlow is very nice.”

“I believe that”, Al says. Maybe Mrs. Marlow checks up on Fawley every once in a while. She seems like the type. A tiny wave of relief washes over him. 

“Speaking about family”, Fawley says, when Al puts the last tomato into the fridge, “when are you going to visit yours?”

Al blinks.

“It’s Sunday, isn’t it? Do young people these days not visit their parents on Sundays?”

Al isn’t sure if they do. His brother James, of course, comes around at the weirdest times and the most random intervals, but he really isn’t a great example for normalcy. His sister Lily is at Hogwarts all year.

“I guess I should pay a visit”, Al agrees reluctantly.

“Well then”, Fawley says, his hand moving in a swift motion, “Run along and leave an old man to his privacy.”

* * *

Al walks home. He could take the bus, he guesses, or just apparate, but he’s never really warmed up to apparition, he isn’t much good at it either. Besides, he needs the time to clear his head. To figure out what he wants to say.

It’s a surprisingly sunny day, even though it’s getting chilly, but that’s to be expected this time of the year. Al is surprised by how much he enjoys the sunlight. Maybe he’ll go outside to draw one of these days. Or at least to take photos. Find motives, references.

He lets the cool air go through his lungs and is surprised how clear his head feels. Sure, he’s still feels a little bit lost, but he can think properly. He hasn’t been this non-frantic in weeks. He’s not sure where the change comes from.

His parents know that he got a new job. He found a post office the same day and sent them an owl with a short note. Al always wonders why there is no more efficient way to communicate. Owls _are_ fast, but you have to have one and even if you do, they don’t just hang out at your house all day. It’s just not very convenient when you think about it. Then on the other hand, you don’t have to have a full-on conversation every time you want to give someone an update on your life.

Anyway, Al is a good enough son to let his parents know when he was moving out of their house, but at the same time, he didn’t necessarily have the energy to _explain himself_ , which is why he is mildly nervous when he steps in the front door now.

He’s a bit early for supper, but he can smell food from the front door. The house feels familiar—of course it does, he’s lived here until a week ago. But at the same time, it feels different, it feels other—like he can’t ever go back to before. He could, probably, go back to living with his parents, but at the same time he knows he can’t.

That _is_ the problem with explaining himself. He doesn’t have any explanations, just feelings. But in his family, everyone always wants explanations.

He can hear his father shuffling around in the kitchen, but it is his mother that comes to the hall to see who’s there.

“Al!”, she exclaims. Her hair is in a loose ponytail and she’s in her work-out clothes. She doesn’t look old to Al, exactly, but tired in a way.

“Hi, mum.”

* * *

It's only a day after his first supper at his parent’s house that he can’t bear it any longer and goes to visit Scorpius at work. It’s around noon, but Al catches him right on his tiny desk in the portkey office.

He looks just like he did back in school, Al thinks for a moment. Leaning over the desk, quill tickling the side of his face. Al has seen him like this a thousand times. But he looks very different as well, grown up in formal robes instead of hoodies and their school uniforms. Something in Al’s chest aches. He’s been missing Scorpius like an amputated limp and he didn’t even notice. He feels even guiltier about that. Also, he’s disturbing him at work. Why the hell would he come here when Scorpius was working?

“Hey Scorpius”, he says, anyway, because it would be even worse to leave now.

Scorpius looks up.

“Al.”, he says, his voice mild in surprise, not unfriendly, but Al can see the carefulness in his eyes. Scorpius is an exceptionally careful person at all times, but there is more to it now, a kind of guard. It aches in Al’s bones.

“Do you have a moment?”, Al asks.

Scorpius glances at the clock at the back of the office. There are two more desks in the room, but he is the only one in right now.

“Oh, yes of course. It’s time for my lunch break, anyway.” He blinks, as if surprised by this revelation. “Do you want to go out to get some food?”

“Sure!”, Al agrees hastily, scrambles to help Scorpius as he stands up suddenly.

Scorpius shakes for a moment, then settles against Al’s shoulder, harder than usual.

_Bad day, then._

Without a word, Al accios Scorpius’ wheelchair and helps him sit down.

“Thank you”, Scorpius says, but opts to push himself rather than letting Al help him further.

They make their way out of the ministry without talking beyond the necessary and settle for a small bistro nearby. It’s a muggle establishment, but one that’s frequented by wizards.

Finally, their lunches in front of them, Al takes a deep breath. “I wanted to apologise.” He feels his fingers drumming against the table and is almost irritated by it. He hasn’t done that as much the past week. “I asked you to compromise your work even though I know it’s very important to you. That wasn’t okay. I’m sorry.”

Al has never really considered whether or not he was good at apologies. But he certainly hasn’t been good at talking to people at all lately, so apologising doesn’t come easily either. He really hopes he’s doing a decent job.

Scorpius blinks at him from across the table, something like relief in his eyes. “It’s all right”, he says, voice quiet but steady.

“It’s really not!”, Al counters, more frustrated with himself than with his friend. “I pressured you. And I wouldn’t have stopped either, if not-“ He stops, not knowing what else to say.

“Oh, forget it”, Scorpius says and relief washes over Al like a wave.

“Are you sure?”

Scorpius shrugs. “What’s there to be sure about?”

They smile at each other.

“Honestly though”, Scorpius says, taking a bite out of his sandwich, “Rose and I have been worried about you, mate.”

“Everyone seems to have been, lately.” Al is strangely tired. He hasn’t wanted to talk about this for months now. But suddenly he just feels resigned. This conversation is happening anyway and he might just get it over with.

“Well, that’s because you’ve been acting weird.” Scorpius voice is still quiet and steady. “There’s all the fidgeting, and the shaking, for one… Are you feeling all right?”

“I-“ _Of course,_ Al wants to say. But in all honesty, he isn’t too sure. He hasn’t been paying much attention. There was exhaustion, and headaches, and the occasional dizziness, but it couldn’t have been that bad, could it? But if Scorpius noticed it? Sure, Scorpius is observant, but Al hasn’t even seen him all that much.

“I think so”, Al says, finally, not very convinced. Scorpius doesn’t seem to be, either.

“Well, you should pay a little attention to that. You know those things can turn out nasty.”

Al winces, but Scorpius doesn’t sound bitter. It’s how his whole thing started, Al remembers. Dizziness. And now Scorpius can’t walk on his own most days.

“I don’t think it’s that serious.”

“Well, you never know.” Scorpius pauses. “But you’re better today, aren’t you?”

“I- I guess I am.” It’s true. No headaches today, and he’s not too tired either. No blacked-out vision, nor was there any yesterday. Or the day before. _Funny._

“I’ve been sleeping better?” It comes out as a question, but at the same time, he realises that it’s completely true. He _has_ been sleeping better. Not exactly at normal times, ore even the same times everyday, but better, nonetheless.

Scorpius shrugs. “Maybe that’s it.”

They are quiet for a minute, eating, looking at each other.

“That wasn’t the only thing you meant, though, was it?” Al breaks the silence. He probably could have gotten off with leaving the conversation, talking about something else, Scorpius is kind like that. But as much as he doesn’t want to talk about it, he knows he’ll have to, anyway. It’s the thing with explanations they all have going on. Better to talk to Scorpius than to anyone else.

“You are acting kind of weird, Al.” Scorpius hesitates. “You know, you keep, you know, dodging conversations, and you don’t want to meet up a lot, or talk. And when you do, you seem, I don’t know. A bit far away, I guess?”

Al sighs. “I know.” And he does. He’s been pushing it away, but he _knows_ it’s true.

Scorpius reaches across the table and touches Al’s upper arm lightly. Al almost winces, but he isn’t sure why. Maybe he just hasn’t been touched a lot lately.

“Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

Al sighs again. “I’m not sure I know how to.” He stops for a moment, then starts speaking again. There are some things he _can_ explain.

“You know I’m working at the _Nightowl._ ”

“Right, the bar. You’ve been there for a while now, haven’t you?”

“It’s also a coffeeshop”, Al says, but secretly he’s glad Scorpius remembers. Unlike his parents, or even Rose, Scorpius never talks like the _Nightowl_ is just some temporary part of Al’s life, a transition stage that barely matters. It’s nice in a way, even though Al himself doubts he’ll be there forever.

“Anyway, I’ve been drawing a lot, and painting some, and I was just walking around, going to a lot of art galleries, and just looking around the city, to, I don’t know, see things? Look for inspiration, I guess.” It feels weird to talk about it, awkward and a little wrong. He hasn’t talked about this at all, guarded it almost greedily against the rest of the world and just letting it out feels somehow wrong. But also a little like a relief.

“I see”, Scorpius says, and it doesn’t sound weird or judgemental like it might have with anyone else.

“So you know how some paintings are magical, right?”

“Like the portraits at Hogwarts, you mean? They move around?”

“Well yeah, sort of. But that’s not all of it. There’s just magic in them, you know?”

Scorpius doesn’t look like he does, but he doesn’t deny it either.

“Anyway, I figured I wanted to learn how to do that”, Al says and gets frustrated by how much that does not come even close to what he actually means, what he _feels._ “I want to, I need to, I mean, no I don’t, I guess, but I do really, really want to… I don’t know.”

Scorpius just nods. He might really understand, Al thinks. Scorpius is intense like that, way more than Al ever was, so he might understand more about the kind of intensity Al is feeling now, even if he doesn’t get it himself.

“So I found out about Fawley, the guy I was talking about to you. And he is like this incredible painter. He did Dumbledore’s portrait and stuff. And no matter what he paints, there is so much magic in it, it’s insane. So I…” Al hesitates. It sounds so stupid out loud, crazy and extremely entitled. “So I figured if I found him, and met him, I could get him to teach me. To take me on as an apprentice or something.”

“So that’s why you asked me and Rose about him.”, Scorpius says, slowly.

Al nods. “I shouldn’t have gotten that worked up over it. But I was just—I don’t know; I had this kind of tunnel vision, and I… I really don’t know.”

Scorpius nods again, slowly. “So what will you do now?”

Al smiles at that. “I wasn’t done yet, actually.”

He tells him about how he found Fawley and everything else that happened.

Scorpius eyes just grow wider and wider.

“He really just gave you his Gringotts key?”, he settles on, finally.

Al nods. “I know, right? I’m not sure if he’s not a little bonkers, to be honest. I’ve been trying to take care of him a little, you know, making sure he eats and takes breaks and stuff.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

Al blinks. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you were looking for a teacher, not someone to nanny.”

Al blinks. He feels vaguely offended, but at the same time he knows what Scorpius is saying is objectively true. “I don’t mind. Besides, he’s still teaching me.”

Scorpius shrugs. “As long as you’re happy.” He stretches in his wheelchair and glances at his watch.

“Do you have to go?”, Al asks immediately. “Don’t be late on my account.”

“No, no, I still have time.” Scorpius sighs. “I’m not all that busy”, he admits. He suddenly looks very sad, the tension from before gone.

“Not a lot of people travelling per portkey?”

“About ten or so per week.”

“And they employ you for that?”, Al asks, before he can think about how that sounds. “I mean, you check the request, make sure there is a safe and secret space available for them to land and no muggles could ever notice and that’s that?”

“I also write it down carefully in a book”, Scorpius replies, “but yeah, that’s it basically.”

Al thinks that sounds like an absolute waste of Scorpius’ talents and time, but he takes a minute to consider if he actually wants to say that. Insulting Scorpius’ job _again_ doesn’t sound like a very good idea. But still, it is a shame. Scorpius’s brilliant.

“I keep thinking”, Scorpius continues unexpectedly, “that portkeys are so underutilised. Like, they are basically like apparating, except more accessible. You only have to be there at the right time and touch the object. You don’t even have to be a wizard to do it!”

Al didn’t know that. “Why are they so heavily regulated, then?”, he asks instead.

“Well, it’s not exactly inconspicuous”, Scorpius says, “and besides, so is apparition.”

_It is?_

“It is?”

“Well, it is in theory. It’s just a lot harder to keep tabs on, which is why the regulations aren’t effective at all.” He pauses and stares in the distance for a second like that is on of the great injustices of life. “Anyway, that’s not actually my business, I guess. But the portkeys though—if we could just establish designated spaces that are hidden from muggles, we could just always use those—it would be so much more efficient.”

“You mean like a bus stop?”, Al asks, not sure if he’s following correctly.

Scorpius beams. “ _Exactly_ like a bus stop. Maybe we could also get regular schedules, just place a portkey there everyday that goes to another stop and people could take their longer journeys more easily, especially to places where there aren’t any floos… As for the books, there must be a way to make that happen magically. Then again, if we set up all the portkeys like that regularly, maintaining the books would be a lot easier. We would only have to report irregular stuff, like around events. And international travel of course…”

At this point, Scorpius is ranting, and Al is completely lost. He doesn’t mind all that much though.

“Maybe you should bring all that up to your superior?”, Al suggests, when Scorpius takes a break in his musings, clearly lost in thought.

Scorpius blinks. “…what?” But he must have heard Al after all, because he continues on immediately. “I guess I could. It’s just, if it was that easy, wouldn’t anyone have tried it before?”

Al shrugs. “I’ve never thought about how efficiently portkeys are used before, to be honest.”

“Hmm.” Scorpius doesn’t seem convinced. He stares into space for another moment, then he takes another glance at his clock.

“I really should get going now.”

“Of course.” Al stands up immediately.

Scorpius smiles at him, his thoughts far away and his attention back on Al. “It was good talking to you, though, mate. Really.”

Al can’t help but smile back. “You too.”

* * *

Life goes on in a bit of a blur. Al paints, Al draws, Al works at the _Nightowl,_ Al makes sure the other Al eats three meals a day, Al opens letters, Al buys groceries, Al wanders around the city taking pictures of what he wants to paint. Next to all of that, there is not a lot of free time left. Al doesn’t exactly mind. He meets Scorpius and Rose twice a week and visits his parents on Sundays. Occasionally, they—the two Als—are invited over to tea by Mrs. Marlow. Al hopes it’s enough to keep him from becoming a complete social recluse. (Or, if that’s not possible, at least to keep everyone else from getting into his hair about it.)

All in all, Al is busy, and it keeps him from going too insane, but he still has his art, which also keeps him from going insane, but in a completely different way. The routine controls his more disturbing tendencies, while painting the way moonlight shines on puddles keep them alive just enough that Al still feels alive himself. It’s a good system, really.

Although, as far as the moonlight is concerned, maybe Al should scratch the “painting” and settle for “trying to paint”. By now, he sketched it at least a hundred times, taken two dozen photos, (non of which captured what he’s actually seeing, which is ridiculous considering they were _photos,_ for Merlin’s sake), and a couple absolute wastes of canvas. Frankly, it’s unbearable. He just can’t get it right, and he’s not even sure what it is. Fawley, upon seeing the disaster, makes a grave face and offers Al some tea. And advice that Al doesn’t really understand,

Fawley, Al soon notices, has an interesting approach to art. Al kind of expected that. He is a genius, after all, and geniuses always have interesting approaches.

Al thought that Fawley only painted faces, but that’s not quite true, he notices. He sketches just about everything, from the chair in the middle of his room and the street below the window to Al’s lunch box and the stains on his own shirt. All of them are incredible in the sense that they are incredibly accurate, but above that, they are magic. They don’t always move, actually, they usually don’t, simply because they are usually of things that just don’t move, but Al can tell anyway. It’s just there.

It’s incredible, and it’s incredibly frustrating, because Al just can’t figure out how he’s doing it.

Fawley isn’t much of a help. Which isn’t to say he doesn’t try. He keeps giving Al advice, but it’s just not the kind of advice that is easily applied.

“Just picture what is there”, he says, “and then you draw it!”

“But that’s what I’ve been doing!”, Al says, and _really, isn’t that what anyone who draws does?_

“Look closer!”, Fawley says.

Al look closer and finds absolutely nothing. (Well, actually, he realises that his shading is wonky, but changing that doesn’t bring the magic in his painting.)

He wishes Fawley would just _explain_ , properly. But then again, Fawley did warn him about that the very first time they met. Al is like the rest of his family after all. He, too, really always wants explanations.

The realisation makes him cut Fawley some slack. He probably sucks at explaining what he means the same way Al sucks at explaining to his family what he even is doing here at all.

That isn’t to say that Al doesn’t learn anything. He learns a ton of different spells to preserve paint, to erase mistakes, to clean paintbrushes, and so on and so forth. He gets better at painting and drawing and taking photos and looking at them the way you get better at something when you do it every day. He gets plenty of experience in household spells as well—not really because Fawley makes him do all the chores, but because Al doesn’t trust the old man’s ability to do them himself.

So basically, he gets tea and advice he doesn’t get, but that’s okay. He will eventually. Or not. Maybe he should reconsider the part about art and his sanity. Well, there is only so much insanity one can eradicate from oneself.

Either way, Al’s blur of routine, art and being busy, is not ready to be shaken like this. Honestly, disrupting his life like this should be illegal. Or, at the very least, it should warrant a warning. But no, Al gets no warning.

It’s a completely unremarkable day at the _Nightowl._ Al is working the morning shift, his least favourite, because it occupies the time he preferably uses to sleep, but it needs to be done three or four times a month. Since he’s not very practised as a barista (though he has done it on occasion) he’s manning the cash register. It’s busy, but not unbearably so, and Al is used enough to the work that he doesn’t have to think about it much.

The girl he’s working with—not Cath, but she seems to be about the same age, Al doesn’t know her name—complains to him about the three essays she has due this week and Al nods along sympathetically without actually listening. His mind is on puddles and moonlight and maybe he should try watercolours.

He looks up at the next customer and to tell him his total and stops in his tracks.

“Merlin!”, he exclaims, so loud that his co-worker and several customers shoot him strange looks. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Fawley has a glint in his eyes. He smiles a small smile. “Getting coffee”, he says, not bothering to hide his amusement.

“You’re getting a decaf caramel macchiato with a shot of espresso, almond milk and cream!”, Al says, exasperated, “that doesn’t qualify as coffee!”

“It’s listed as coffee on your menu”, Fawley points out, looking at a pile of coins in his palm, “and I think I owe you this much.”

He actually offers the correct amount of muggle money, a surprising feat for someone who surrendered his financial responsibility at the first possible moment. Also for a wizard who’s used to galleons instead of pounds.

“Yes”, Al says, taking the money, “You _never_ go to get coffee.”

“And you would know.”

Al feels like he’s being laughed at. “Wouldn’t I?”, he says, raising his eyebrows.

“Well, maybe I’m changing my habits.”

“Please don’t”, Al replies without hesitation. Fawley, Al has found out in the past weeks, can handle Al’s jabs from time to time, which is fortunate since Al can usually only contain himself for that long.

Al’s co-worker clears her throat. “You’re holding up the line”, she whispers.

Al blinks, and she hands Fawley his drink. “I’m sorry”, he tells her and looks on to the next customer. He has to work here, no matter what Fawley is up to.

He is just getting over his shock when business finally slows down a bit. Morning rush is mostly over. Al, as someone who usually sees this place at night when people come to party, still has a hard time imagining people getting their regular old morning coffee here, but alas, that’s what’s happening. He can imagine his boss-slash-teacher-slash-old-guy-he’s-sort-of-taking-care-of getting coffee here even less, but that is also happening, so. Yeah.

“Who is that guy?” His co-worker leans over to him while Al wipes the counter.

“My roommate”, Al says, figuring it’s the least complicated way to describe their strange working relationship. Perhaps the one that leaves the least questions.

“Your roommate?”, the girl asks. She raises one of her brows elegantly. She’s one of those girls who must put an effort into how their eyebrows look—use whatever makeup one uses for eyebrows and probably also pluck some of them to make their shape look better. Al is pretty sure Rose also does that. “Isn’t he, like, ancient, though?”

“Ninety-three”, Al answers.

“You live with a ninety-three-year-old guy?”, she asks.

Al doesn’t want to explain his life to her. Especially since most of is literally illegal for him to tell. The whole magical part.

“Well, I have to live somewhere.”

“Oooh, I see!” She shoots him another conspiratorial look, which makes Al slightly uneasy. What does she think she figured out? Not the truth, surely? Al decides he doesn’t want to know.

“You know”, he says instead, “I was wondering, what _is_ your professor’s deal?”

The girl laughs like he is funny. Al’s not funny. He just wants to change the subject and he’s reasonably sure she was complaining about a professor earlier. It’s a safe bet with college kids.

“I know, right?” She launches into another rant and Al stops listening after the second word.

Fawley is sitting at the far table, not even trying to hide that he’s watching them. Al sighs and the sound goes down all the way to his soul.

Fawley stays at the _Nightowl_ for hours and only leaves about half an hour before the end of Al’s shift.

* * *

When Al asks Fawley what he really was doing at the _Nightowl,_ Fawley is already bringing out a canvas for his new painting.

“I told you, Al, I am going to paint a portrait of you.”

Al doesn’t see how the two connect. He’s too tired to ask, and asks Fawley where the watercolours went instead.

* * *

Luckily for Al’s general peace of mind, Fawley only visits him at work two more times, once on his night shift and once on his morning shift.

The first time is just before Christmas. Al is working with Cath again, as he’s been doing a lot. He doesn’t mind. They have a good working rhythm and while she likes to pry, it’s in a gentle way that Al doesn’t mind too much.

“Are you lost, sir?”, Cath asks through the music, “We could call you a taxi?”

“No, no”, a familiar voice calls back, “I would like a drink.”

Al looks up, sighs, and leaves the room to get more ice. At this point he doesn’t want to know.

When he comes back, Fawley has settled on a table a bit away, sipping whatever drink Cath fixed up for him.

“What a weird guy”, she tells Al, clearly watching Fawley back, which Al finds amusing. “He looks like he’s a hundred years old.”

“Ninety-three”, Al corrects.

“What?”, Cath asks. She didn’t hear him over the loud music.

“I say he’s ninety-three!”

Cath smiles and starts guessing the ages of their other customers. Smiling, Al joins in.

Fawley doesn’t stay nearly as long as the last time.

* * *

The holidays come and go and Al works through most of them. The _Nightowl_ closes on Christmas day, but Al starts working again right after. He hesitates to leave Fawley alone for Christmas, but the old man basically kicks him out.

“Your parents must resent me already for taking up all your time”, Fawley explains, which is ironic considering Al is pretty sure he wouldn’t be talking to his parents half as much if Fawley didn’t make him go to their house for supper once a week.

But Mrs. Marlow invites Fawley over with a warm smile and Christmas cookies and Al can be persuaded to go home.

“Such a good boy”, Mrs. Marlow says, “a shame that your parents can’t come around themselves.”

Al still isn’t quite sure what her impression of his family is. She still thinks Al and Fawley are related, but then why wouldn’t Al just bring him along for Christmas? Al decides not to question her thought process too closely.

That matter settled, Al braces himself for Christmas dinner at the Burrow. It’s loud and chaotic as usual and Al is surprised by how much he enjoys it.

All his younger cousins are home from Hogwarts, as is his sister, Lily, and even Uncle Charlie’s come home from Romania this year.

To his own surprise, Al actually managed to get appropriate presents for most of them for once.

Lily spends half of the dinner telling him about her extra transfiguration classes. His little sister is a genius, which is why McGonagall tutors her separately. There are no normal people in Al’s life. Not that he minds too much. He adores Lily.

“You know how in order to transform something, you need to know what the new thing is supposed to look like, right?”, she says between two bites of turkey, “Professor McGonagall says it’s actually a lot more about knowing the concept of someone and that’s the reason why it’s so hard to transform into other people—you know, because it’s hard to completely understand a person.”

“Blah, blah, blah”, interrupts Lucy, Al’s youngest cousin and, without a doubt, his nosiest. “Nobody cares!”

Lily shoots her cool look, which is uncharacteristic. She’s usually too absent-minded to hold a grudge, but there seems to be a weird tension between the two of them. “Well, I’m sure you can talk to your new best friend who must be way more interesting than whatever I have to say.”

“You know she doesn’t have anywhere else to go!”, Lucy hisses.

Al glances back at Lucy’s friend Carolina who is awkwardly talking to Rose’s brother Hugo across the room. The conversation looks extremely painful. Al can’t exactly blame Huge, but he also doesn’t feel like he has the energy to get into this. Too much history, but frankly, Al doesn’t have the patience for grudges. Lily, apparently, is less kind.

“I find it interesting.”, he says, cutting off that line of conversation. Also, he does find it interesting. Transfiguration was always one of his favourite subjects in school. Besides, it’s useful for art, which automatically puts it in Al’s way of interest.

“Yes, yes”, Lucy says impatiently, but at least they’re not talking about Carolina anymore, “but I want to know what’s going on with Al, since he can’t be bothered to write me anymore.”

“You say that like I’ve ever written to you before.”

Before, Lucy forcefully inserted himself into his, Scorpius’ and Rose’ affairs. That is Lucy’s way. She can’t be happy without getting her nose into other people’s business. Al knows this and has resigned himself to it.

“Before”, Lucy says, “we were living in the same castle.”

Still, he doesn’t feel like he needs to support her nosiness.

“Well, you’ll be disappointed”, Al says, “my life isn’t very interesting.”

“You could still write, Al”, Lily says, unexpectedly. Al looks at her. She looks tired and a little hurt. Al hasn’t been writing. Neither to Lucy nor to Lily and all of the sudden, he feels a little guilty.

They used to be close. Al and Lucy, somewhat forcibly, but Al and Lily as well. He used to write her all the time before she started Hogwarts. In hindsight he can’t believe he’s not doing it now.

“I guess I could”, he says, somewhat awkwardly.

* * *

He tries to better about that afterwards. Writing. He has to go to the post office all the time for Fawley’s correspondence anyway, so it shouldn’t take that much time of his (admittedly packed) schedule, but Al still thinks it’s a bother. Sending letters takes forever. Sometimes you want to have an immediate conversation. There must be some sort of solution to that.

But in the end, he is too busy to really think about it. He keeps painting, helping out Fawley, visiting his parents and writes letters to Lily. (As for Lucy, Al honestly doesn’t think it’s a good idea to encourage her, which is why he coaxes Rose to send his regards in her letters instead).

After that, time flies even faster. Winter bleeds into spring, when Fawley visits Al in his evening shift and an extremely awkward moment occurs when Cath clues Al in that Carol—the girl usually working the morning shift—is convinced that Fawley’s Al’s secret Sugar Daddy, but other than that nothing exciting happens. After spring comes summer and summer brings the next real shock to Al’s routine.

“You want me to do what?”

“A vacation”, Fawley says, staring intently at the terrible mustache of one of the middle-aged men he’s drawing today. “You’ve heard of those before, haven’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I'm not sure how happy I am with this chapter. Some of it is a bit filler, but there is a lot that needed to happen for the rest of the story, and I think there are also some funny moments inbetween. Al might seem like he's a little closer to getting his life together but *spoiler* he's really not.   
> Anyway, tell me what you think!  
> (Next chapter featuring Al's vacation)


	4. I've got my heart set (on anywhere but here)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al goes on holiday, makes an important discovery, and still has no clue how to take care of himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is so late because originally I wanted to put all of Al's holiday into one--but that got extremely long, so I decided to split it. (Meaning the next chapter is still a monster and this one is not huge, but I needed to make the cut simewhere that made sense, so...) In any case, enjoy!

“Of course I’ve heard of holidays before!”

“Well then. Go. Travel. Widen your horizons. I don’t want to see you back here before September.”

Al breathes in, deeply, then lets the air out slowly. “I’m sorry”, he says, “Are you saying I should just leave the country for two months?”

“More like two and a half, but, basically, yes.”

“I can’t just leave for that long!”

Fawley raises his cup to his lips and takes a sip of tea. “Why not?”

“I- I need to-” Al searches for words. “I have a life here!”

“Listen to yourself”, Fawley says, pushing the second teacup in front of Al, “You sound like you’re forty and have three kids. What responsibilities do you have that you can’t lie down for a while?”

“I have a job, for one!” Al doesn’t take the tea.

“Oh, I’m sure you can work something out at the café of yours. You never take a day off, anyway. And you don’t spend any of your money, so you should be able to make do for a while.”

It’s true. Al doesn’t really take days off. He doesn’t see the point, really. That doesn’t mean his boss will take kindly to him just leaving for weeks and weeks on end. Besides-

“Well, my other job, then.”

Fawley looks up at him, then starts laughing. “You mean your job with me? Obviously, I’ll give you time off.”

“Yeah, but-“ Al breaks off. He doesn’t know how to say it in a way that won’t be upsetting. _How will you manage without me?_ Al is taking care of Fawley, he knows he is. He stops him from getting caught up in his works for hours and hours, he makes sure he eats, he makes sure there _is_ any food in the house. He makes sure he goes for walks every once in a while, he even airs out the flat so they both can breathe. He even handles his finances. He does basically _everything._

“Who is going to open your letter when I’m gone?” is what he settles for.

“Oh, don’t you worry about that. They send a few reminder notices before they come knocking on my door.”

“…right.” This does nothing to reassure Al.

Fawley sighs dramatically. “Drink your tea, boy. I’ve been fine for ninety-three years before I met you. I’ll manage a few months.”

He pauses.

“In fact, I insist you leave. I make it your task as my apprentice.”

Al sighs. Then he drinks his tea.

* * *

Cath yawns and raises her foot up on a chair to tie her laces. “I’m so tired, Al. If I drop down dead on my way home, will you go to my funeral?”

“Only if it’s on my way to McDonalds”, Al deadpans.

Cath looks up. “Al!” She smiles. “Was that a joke? Did you just make a joke?”

“Yes?”, Al replies, pulling on a jumper that doesn’t reek of alcohol, “I am a very humorous person. I make jokes all the time.”

“You do _not_. I feel like I’ve unlocked a new level of friendship.”

Al has no clue what that means. He decides he doesn’t want to ask. Instead, he changes the topic.

“Cath—do you go on holidays?”

She turns her head back to him, combing out her hair with her fingers before bringing it back up to tie it into a new ponytail.

“You mean like in general? I guess I have before. Why?”

“I might need to leave the country.”

She blinks. “Can you be any less weird? I’m too tired for this. What the hell are you talking about?”

Al sighs. He, too, is too tired for this.

“For personal reasons, I’m not gonna be in—I have to do something else for a bit of time, and I won’t be able to go to work. How do you think I can pull that off without losing my job?”

For a brief moment Cath looks like she might have fallen asleep right there on the chair in their breakroom. Then she raises her head again.

“I swear to god Al, this is the reason why Carol thinks you are secretly a Russian spy.”

“She thinks what- wait I don’t want to know.”

Cath pulls her elastic around her hair another time. “Well, I don’t know, how much paid leave do you have left?”

Al shrugs. “How much do I get?”

“Annually? 28 days.”

“28 days, then.”

Cath throws him a look, then seems to decide something. “Well, then you can take that, I guess, I think that’s like five weeks.”

“And if I need longer?”

“Well, you can’t just not go to work. Maybe you could pretend you’re sick, but no-one’s gonna believe that if you’re supposed to come back from like, five weeks of holidays.”

“I see.” Al sighs again. “Looks like I’ll have to quit, then.”

Cath turns around on her chair. “No way!”

Al looks up, surprised. “Why not?”

“I don’t want you too!”

He blinks. “I’m sorry?”

He didn’t think Cath would care much about his financial security. Fawley is at least right about that though—he barely spends any of his money. He doesn’t pay rent and Fawley covers for food and art supplies. There isn’t much more that Al needs, so he just saves the majority of it. Which is what Fawley pointed out when Al tried to use that as an argument why he couldn’t go. _What on earth are you saving for, Al? What are your big plans? If you don’t know, you might as well just use it!_ Nice of him to bring up Al’s general cluelessness about life.

“Well, if you quit, Monica has to hire someone new who needs to be trained from scratch and is probably gonna be annoying.”

“I didn’t think you found people annoying”, Al says. _I didn’t think you’d find me specifically any less annoying than other people._

“I’m good at hiding it.”

Al doesn’t really know what to say to that. “Well, either way, I can’t work through the summer. I have other responsibilities.”

“Your degree you mean? Do you need to get work experience in your field or something?”

Al blinks. So Cath assumes he’s a student. It’s not even that wrong if you think about it. He’s learning stuff after all. Sort of.

“Something like that.”

“Well, then we’ll figure something out.” She makes her way through the breakroom. “Are you coming?”

“You mean, right now?”

“Of course right now. It’s not like you have that much time left. Really, you should have said something sooner.”

Al shrugs, but follows after her.

They _do_ find a solution. As it turns out, Monica, the owner of the _Nightowl_ is willing to let Al take all of his leave and then let him quit but will hire him again come September.

“Just don’t bail on me, Potter. I can get some kid for the summer but finding a competent person year-round is harder than you’d think”, Monica grumbles, as she hands over the paperwork. “Just make sure to say something sooner next time.”

Al leaves with two surprising revelations. One, he’s considered a competent employee. Two, Cath actively wants him around. He has no clue when that happened.

* * *

Al decides to go by broom. It isn’t safe to apparate such long distances and the floo system only works in Great Britain. He could always take a portkey, of course, but that sort of requires exactly knowing where you want to go. You need to have a plan. Al doesn’t have one, which is why he sets out on his broom, armed with a raincoat, a shrunken suitcase and some cash. He doesn’t have a lot with him—clothes and toiletries and art supplies and he feels like he’ll probably regret that, but he doesn’t really know which part of it, so he can’t change it.

He says good-bye to his parents the day before, but Scorpius and Rose insist to come see him off. It’s a bit of an awkward affair. They haven’t been to the flat before, haven’t met Fawley and having two so completely different parts of his life collide like that just feels uncomfortable to Al.

Rose greets Fawley with her publicity smile, the one that closes off her face with how nice and polite it is and reveals absolutely nothing about her. Al can tell that she’s assessing Fawley, comparing what she’s seeing to what Al has told her about his teacher and filling in the blanks. Sometimes, Rose can be quite judgemental. Al can basically see her make her judgements as he pockets his now tiny suitcase and slips into his jacket.

“It’s nice to meet you, Sir.”, Scorpius says, “Al has told us a lot about you.”

 _Someone_ , Al thinks, _needs_ _to tell Scorpius that this is possibly the most loaded sentence you can say when meeting a new person._

But Fawley only smiles. “Likewise”, he says.

Scorpius smiles back. Unlike Rose, he takes everyone at face-value. It really does beg the question how he survives his job at the ministry. It must have something to do with his incredible stubbornness, Al supposes.

“I would offer some tea”, Fawley continues, “but I think Al here is in a bit of a hurry.”

Al isn’t really. Sure, he is basically on his way out the door, but it’s not like there’s anyone waiting for him, but he doesn’t say so. He really just wants to get this over with.

“Well then”, Al starts, not really knowing what it is that he is trying to say. His voice is strangely tight.

Rose opens her arms and hugs him so tightly, he almost can’t breathe. She’s still taller than Al is, always has been, always will be, even if Scorpius towers over both of them now. She smells like she always does—that weird mildly expensive perfume their cousin Victoire always gets her for her birthday, mixed with home. Just home.

Scorpius is next, and like always, he is gentler and more careful than Rose. “Take care”, he says quietly, “we’ll miss you.”

Rose nods vigorously. “You have enough money, right? And your wand? And a raincoat?” She starts rambling off a list of items, not all of them really practical for a holiday.

Sensing that she’ll drive him crazy if he doesn’t stop her soon, Al interjects. “I have everything. I’ll be fine.”

She blinks. “Of course you will.” There’s a pause, then she smiles. “Just have fun. And send us an owl if you’re in trouble.”

Al nods. “Will do.”

Scorpius nods back at him.

Al turns around to Fawley, catches him watching them. For the first time it occurs to Al that Fawley might be judging his friends back. Al realises that he’s a bit nervous about the conclusion he might come to, but there’s no time for all that. Al is leaving. He is leaving now. He doesn’t know what to say.

Fawley stretches out his arms. Al is surprised for a moment but he’s already moving in, hugging the strange old man. Strange, how familiar they’ve become to each other. But Fawley’s already letting him go.

“Try not to kill yourself on accident, boy.”

“I’ll do my best.”, Al says, feeling like there is more significance in the words, something about them he doesn’t quite understand yet.

He looks back at his friends. They are smiling, but Al can see that Rose’ eyes are watery. It makes Al feel warm inside.

All of that—it’s too much. This is why he avoids people, seriously.

“Time to go then, I guess”, he says, and just like that, he’s ready. He casts a few charms to make sure no muggles will see him flying over London, and then he takes off. Just like that.

The tightness in his chest grows lighter as the lights of London fade beneath him. It’s a weird feeling. Al has travelled before, gone on holidays with his family, and for his mother’s Quidditch games of course, but never on his own. Of course, Al is used to doing things on his own now, but still.

He’s missed flying, he realises, when the land under him gives way for the sea. He’s crossing the Channel towards France, which seems just as well as any other starting point.

He’s always _liked_ flying, and been good at it, it’s a given considering his family. But he’s never been that passionate about it, never bothered to try to join the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Still, now he enjoys the wind in his hair, the cold clarity of the air that seems to transfer into his mind. He wishes he could paint it. Maybe he’ll try to.

Al started his flight in the late afternoon. It’s maybe not the smartest way to do travel, but Al doesn’t exactly have a normal sleep schedule, so honestly, it made more sense for him this way. Now, there’s new land under his feat, and Al tries to identify the cities and bigger town on the map attached to the stick of his broom.

 _That must be Paris_ , he thinks, looking at an especially big collection of light. Yes, it is—now that he’s looking closer, he can make out the Eiffel Tower, and the Cathedral of Notre-Dame.

It’s getting dark. Al knows that he should land, try to find a place to sleep, probably. He descends a little, coming closer to the city. The River Seine is flowing in lazy curves right through the lights of the city and Al follows her course, making his way through the view. Paris is magnificent, of course, the way cities are, it has a similar fascination to it as London does, except it is different. It’s as full of people and as lonely in the sense that you can get lost in the crowds, without being watched or noticed, particularly, the same way Al does on his aimless trips in London. Or at least he assumes that part is the same, he can’t know for sure. But the air has a different taste, it seems lighter, warmer in a way, even brighter. Al is not sure if that’s entirely a good thing. It’s not home.

The Seine splits up, forming around an island. Suddenly the cathedral is right below him and following an instinct, Al lands right on top of it.

His eyes glide over the city. It feels like he’s too far down now, can’t see it properly anymore. Weird, considering it’s probably still a better view than what you’d usually get as any muggle tourist. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows that he probably shouldn’t be here, but he is still invisible—the charm he put on himself back in London still holds.

Night has fallen properly now, the last remnants of red and pink light from the sunset fading. It’s like a relief to Al. Last summer, he started going out by himself at night just to enjoy the feeling of it. He doesn’t really understand why he did it back then, but it hasn’t changed. As much as he has changed, and he certainly has, even if he can’t put words to the ways, this has stayed the same. Or maybe it was the first of all the changes, the one that triggered everything else.

Al doesn’t really know, and he doesn’t really want to think about it either. Those are the hard thoughts that keep coming back to him, but he already knows there’s no use in pondering stuff like that. He knows he doesn’t really understand himself, but right now, he doesn’t have the energy to try to. Right now, he just wants to be a little.

So he just keeps standing there, not moving.

Over his heads, the stars start coming out. You can’t really see them all that well, what with the lights from the city. Certainly not as well as you could in Hogwarts, but Al is familiar with the night sky. His astronomy lessons have burned them into his brain and he can fill the blanks nearly from memory.

Al smiles. Astronomy used to be one of his favourite subjects, along with Transfiguration, even though he didn’t really like any of the subjects that are associated with it—he was never that enthusiastic about Potions or Herbology and he never took a Divination class in his life. Those would be the things Astronomy would be useful for, yet Al never took any of them at a NEWT level, but Astronomy he did—Rose used to shake her head about that. Now Al’s glad he didn’t drop it. Studying all those maps was hell, but now the night sky, even if he can barely see it through the light pollution of the city, seems like an open book to him. A map. An invitation for adventure.

Al has been a night person for a while now. Walking at night, working at night, just waking up in the evening, really. He doesn’t want to find a place to rest yet, he doesn’t want to rest. And the same desperation that kept him up and walking through London without aim last summer when he’d just finished school is what makes him hop back on his broom and continue his journey.

Paris sounds lovely, it probably is—but right now, Al needs to move.

* * *

Al stays in France for almost two months. Which is to say, stay is probably not quite the right word. He almost flies the whole night that first day of his journey—right up to Southern France, where he decides, not quite willingly, that he needs to get off the broom. He is _tired_ like he hasn’t been in a long time and his limps are hurting. Flying is a sport after all, even if you’re not racing someone or playing Quidditch.

Al lands in a coast town to the Southeast of France, close to Italy, at least according to Al’s map. He doesn’t actually care that much. If you don’t really have a place you want to go, it doesn’t matter much either way where you are. As long as you’re going of course. But now, Al needs rest. He can feel his grip on the broom slipping. It’s not safe anymore. Neither Fawley nor his friends nor his parents thought to warn him about this the way they did with pretty much everything else that could go wrong on his travels. Well, they probably didn’t think he’d be insane enough to just fly through half the night with only a brief stop.

Al picks out one of the bigger towns, maybe even a city on the coast. It’s late—maybe too late to comfortably find a room in a hotel and as Al lands—on the beach this time—and looks around, he realises that this area is probably way to expensive for him anyway. There are surprisingly many people out and about this time of the night, but Al can discern that there is apparently some sort of event going on—maybe a festival? His lousy French skills, taught to him ages ago by his aunt Fleur are, sadly but not very surprisingly, failing him. Either way, it’s clear that this is a place for rich people. You can tell not only by the people running around, their clothes and their manners, but also from the shops. Definitely not Al’s price range.

There probably are non-rich people in this town—there are everywhere—and places for them, but he is not in a position where he can find out, at least not right now. He can’t even speak the language. But the night is very warm, the way it never is back in England. Without thinking too much, he decides. This might be a tourist trap for rich people or one of those places where people hold their fancy business meetings and possibly seminars for bored rich housewives, but Al can still do magic. And the beach is right there.

With some effort, Al sets up some protective charms—one that will stop people from paying any attention to him, one against muggers or drunks or anyone else that might want to do him any harm, and a last one to protect him from someone else putting any spells on him. He should be safe for now, and for the night.

He doesn’t go to sleep right away, sits there on his spot for a few minutes and watches the rest of this town that doesn’t pay him any mind. It’s partly the spells, but Al suspects that he wouldn’t be noticed much either way, even if he’s different from everyone else her. His pale skin, his language, even his magic—he doesn’t belong here. He is an utter stranger and he is utterly alone. Al feels the excitement of that feeling rushing in his veins, even as he slips of into sleep.

* * *

He wakes up early the next morning—early for Al’s standards at least. He’s used to staying up late and sleeping in, but there’s something about the bright French summer sun that keeps him from staying asleep. Maybe it’s the fear of sunburns. It probably is.

Al uses the day to look around the town some, and even manages to find a decently priced breakfast. In his head, he is already trying to capture the feel of this place on a painting—the beach, the money and the strangeness he feels. He buys a post card for Scorpius and Rose, even though he isn’t quite sure when he’ll get around to sending it. As soon as he finds an owl, he supposes.

He doesn’t want to stay here for long, Al decides. There’s something not quite right with staying and he leaves again in the late afternoon, even if he doesn’t attempt to go quite as far in one night again.

At home, he found some solace in his work with Fawley and even at the bar, some place to direct his restlessness. Here, that solace is gone and transforms into a desire to just _go_ himself. Al can’t believe Fawley actually had to convince him to do this—even after a few days, he almost can’t imagine stopping.

Al crosses the country without any rhyme and reason, without any route that makes sense in a conventional way. He just picks a direction and goes. Most of the time, he stays at least two days, but rarely much more. He mostly sleeps at hostels or cheap hotels, but from time to time, he stays on the beach, using magic to keep himself safe.

He tries to sketch out his impressions, paint some of them even, the ones that feel important or interesting enough and, as always, isn’t quite happy with them, but it’s a feeling he’s been getting used to. He has some art supplies with him, shrunken down in his suitcase, but most of them he conjures from Fawley’s art room back home. He knows the old man wouldn’t mind it too much.

Sometimes, he sits out on the promenades and streets of the cities where he can be seen and offers his work to tourists, draws quick portraits of their children or sketches whatever popular sights the town has to offer. He doesn’t make much money like that, but more than he expected, seeing as he clearly isn’t local. And anyway, that’s not the point. Al is not sure, what exactly the point is. Maybe that it’s interesting. It _is_ interesting.

He visits tiny villages and big cities, the French Alps and the Atlantic, he gets back to see Paris eventually (if only to appease the tiny Rose in his mind). Eventually he decides he’s had enough of France and moves on to Italy.

Al can tell that it’s different right away—the food, obviously, (even if Al doesn’t bother to find somewhere to eat everyday and opts for snacks instead) but also the feeling. And the people. This time, Al opts for a more systematic approach going from North to South. It doesn’t really work out, though, seeing as he changes his mind pretty much immediately. It’s not like it really matters anyway.

Regardless of his general cluelessness, he decides that he prefers Italy. Less posh than France. That might be it. Or maybe it’s because he’s English and the French are generally not that fond of English people. Who knows? Al doesn’t. France was fine, but Italy’s better.

He decides that even before it happens.

Really, it’s a day like any other on Al’s holiday.

He’s sitting out on the street, looking like he’s selling pictures to tourists, which isn’t really his aim, but if anyone wants to buy any, he probably won’t say no. He has been trying to find a way to put the whirlwind of people and heat and old streets on a canvas, but he hasn’t quite figured it out yet and frankly, he’s too tired right now, so he just keeps sketching little things around him. The street—or maybe it’s more of a square, albeit an elongate one—is full of artists and street performers, so there are plenty of interesting things to draw.

He starts with a depiction of the colourful sunshades of a café nearby, but abandons it halfway, in favour of drawing the woman across the street. She’s doing what looks like fortune-telling, not with tea leaves as he’s heard his classmates did in Divination class, but with playing cards and a crystal ball. Sometimes she just takes a person’s hand and looks at their palm for a while, then she says something that Al can’t make out, but her clients look impressed and surprised. It’s fascinating.

Al doesn’t really believe in telling the future. He knows that supposedly there are true seers, but to him it just doesn’t seem very likely. If it were so easy to just tell the future, why wouldn’t they all just plan their lives around that? In any case, seers are usually charlatans, telling people what they want to hear. But still—this girl is fascinating. It’s not even about telling the future, it’s the way she sits there on her blanket, back completely straight, long dark hair like a curtain over her shoulders, regardless of the heat. It’s her presence.

Al’s hand moves over the paper almost automatically, squinting to see her better. He doesn’t want to go closer—that would be creepy, and Al doesn’t want to be a creep.

She really is just a girl, he realises after a bit, she can’t be much older than he is. Still, she exudes confidence and wisdom as if there were no truth in the world that could elude her. It’s fake, obviously, she’s just a muggle girl trying to make a living, but the illusion is very powerful. And it’s that illusion that Al sketches on his paper next to the sunshades.

It’s a quick sketch, but he concentrates on it nonetheless—not so much the technical details he worries so much about usually, but the feeling, the impression.

It’s a quick sketch, it really is, and it doesn’t take him all that long. By all means, it shouldn’t be special. But by the time he’s done, when he makes the last line with his most boring grey pencil, the picture looks back at him. And it winks. Al almost falls off his chair.

* * *

When Al gets up the next morning, the girl in the picture is still winking. And tidying her blanket and her sunshade and shuffling her card deck. Al watches her for almost half an hour before he gets out of bed properly. It wasn’t a dream after all.

He tries to figure it out in his head, but it just doesn’t make any sense. This is not an elaborate work of art, it’s just a sketch. Not even his best, probably. Still, it depicts what he saw on the street yesterday almost perfectly—the same straight pose, the elegance in the movements. And it moves. It’s magical! Al wasn’t even trying to do that, he was just messing around. He had tried that a million times before, of course, but on that stupid little sketch yesterday, he didn’t. It was just supposed to be a sketch. Maybe a little exercise. Why did it work now, of all times?

He doesn’t bother with breakfast, to eager to get to the bottom of the mystery instead and leaves his hostel to look for the street he was working on yesterday. He gets turned around at least three times and almost doesn’t find it again, but he manages eventually.

He just needs to try to do it again. In all honesty, he probably should have done that right away, but, somehow, he couldn’t make himself believe it was real. Hallucinations, maybe. Too much sun? And, in all honesty, he just panicked. He was in the middle of a fairly crowded street full of muggles. He couldn’t just wave a magical drawing around there. It’s a serious violation of secrecy.

A violation of secrecy he’s risking by going there and trying again, but he just _has_ to. There’s not really any other way to find out besides trying. Also, the original sketch is tugged safely in his pocket where nobody can see it. And it probably won’t work again anyway. It’s a fluke. It must be.

The girl is there again, and this time Al positions himself at a different angle, a little bit closer. He can see her half from the side now and her blanket isn’t covered by the people standing around her so much. For a while, Al just hides behind his easel and stares for a bit, watching her and the clients. He didn’t notice yesterday, but she seems to be very popular—not only with the tourists, but also with regular people as well, at least that’s what they look like. She has a longer conversation with a serious-looking man in Italian and Al wonders why he would come to her at all—charisma or no, she’s just a street performer and he doesn’t look like the kind of person to seek that out for enjoyment. And he’s not the only one—from teenage girls, to what looks like new-rich couples and businesspeople—everybody’s coming to see her. She really must be making quite the impression on them.

Al almost doesn’t draw her again—he just sits there and drinks in the details of the interactions, the faces, the expressions, the nonverbal cues and the colours, the whispers of the people coming back on the street. There’s a little sign next to her.

_Il gatto nero—the black cat_

Beneath that another one:

_No photos!_

And that’s what they’re calling her—the black cat. It seems ridiculous to Al—why would you give yourself such a name?—but the whispers are full of respect and awe.

The sun is starting to go down when he picks up his pencil again. It’s less than ideal, to be perfectly honest, drawing without much light always is, but the details of the girls features, her movements and her grace are basically enshrined in his brain by now and he tries to express all of what he has seen today into the sketch. Her expression, the adoration and surprise, the strange respect she’s given and the way she receives it, as if it were natural.

He lets all of the emotion and the awe flow right into it. It’s more detailed than the last one, more careful, but holds the same intent. He’s not even looking at her anymore, too concentrated on the fine lines of his drawing. It’s no use to really look much anyway. The darkness is creeping in and he struggles to even see the lines on the paper. He is just finished, when a burst of Italian behind him startles him.

There she is, the girl in his picture staring right back at her own image. And she’s angry.

“I’m sorry”, Al scrambles, “I can’t understand you.” He thinks for a moment what that might mean in Italian. “No italiano?”, he tries.

She seems to get the message. “Are you drawing me?”, she asks, with surprisingly little accent. The anger flaring in her eyes is clear. And terrifying.

Al doesn’t quite know what to say. “Uh, yes, I mean-”

“You cannot do that without my consent!”, she says, the words coming out almost clinically as if it’s a line she’s had to practice many times.

But she’s right. It’s incredibly insensitive to just draw a person without ever asking.

“I’m sorry”, he says somewhat helplessly. He’s never thought about it like that before. Like he’s violating someone’s rights by making them into a picture. To be fair, Al doesn’t usually even draw people at all, portraits are Fawley’s thing. He prefers empty streets and landscapes, even if people say they’re easier. It’s never been an issue before or even something he’s thought about.

“I don’t want there to be any pictures of me”, the girl says, very slowly and clearly, like she might think Al was dumb.

“I’m very sorry”, Al scrambles, “I’ll give that one to you and you can do with it whatever you want-”

He looks back at the sketch and realises his mistake. Like the other one, this one is also filled with magic, the girl in it glaring at him the same way her real-life counterpart does. Then, she blinks.

Al takes in a sharp breath. There’s no way the girl—the real girl standing right in front of her picture didn’t see that. She did. Al can see the confusion on her face.

What on earth is he supposed to do now? He can’t explain this without explaining about magic, actually, he can’t explain himself at all. It’s illegal! This is the most reckless and stupid thing he’s ever done. What was he even thinking?

But then the girl’s face clears up as if in realisation.

“You are a wizard.”, she says, as if it were the most normal and obvious thing in the world.

They’re both quiet for a moment.

Up close it’s suddenly clear that she’s even younger than he thought she was—his age, if at all.

“You still can’t have my picture”, she says eventually, snatching the page from Al’s sketchbook, she turns around and leaves. Al can only stare after her.

_What on earth just happened?_

He just stands there, needing a few minutes to process. Then he suddenly remembers and blurts out a curse. The other sketch, the original one—he needs to give it back to her!

He starts running, almost tripping over the edge of the pavement, takes one turn, then another one and realises he doesn’t actually know where she could have gone. Al stops in his tracks, his chest heaving. His vision keeps fading in and out for a minute until he can see again.

_Huh. That hasn’t happened in a while._

Whatever, he doesn’t have time to think about that now.

* * *

He thinks about how to approach her again the next day. There’s no way she’s just forgotten about the encounter. Is he supposed to just walk up to her? Wait until she takes a break or something? She already thinks he’s a grade-A creep, and just hanging around her workplace won’t exactly improve that image.

It really would be easier to just forget about the whole thing and keep the damn sketch. It’s not like she knows it exists. She’d never know, and they both could just go on with their lives.

Al shakes his head at himself. That wouldn’t be right. She doesn’t want there to be a picture of her out there, so he needs to give it back to her. Simple as that. Besides, he doesn’t want to forget about the whole thing. Ethical or not, this is the greatest breakthrough he’s had in a year. Even if it doesn’t work again, he certainly doesn’t want to forget about it. And he wants answers to the hundred questions flying around in his head.

_How does she know about magic? Is she a witch? If so, why the hell does she pretend to predict the future to tourists? Why could he draw her like that? Twice!_

In any case, he absolutely has to talk to her again. To find that out. And to return the picture.

Right, the picture. That’s the reason he wants to talk to her again.

As it turns out, the approaching is not even the first problem Al has to face. When he arrives at the street where the girl performed the past few days, she’s not even there. For a lack of a better idea, Al sits down in a nearby café, the one whose sunshades he had been drawing before he made that first sketch, and keeps watching the street. But by the time noon comes around, it’s clear that the girl is not going to show. Al pays his bill and gets up.

Feeling a bit lost, he wanders around the other artists and performers on the street (square? He still isn’t sure. Not that it matters, really).

He wants to kick something.

Instead, he turns to a guy selling hand-painted pottery on a stall.

“Excuse me”, Al says, trying to sound as clear as possible and regretting the fact that he knows basically no Italian, “Do you know where the Black Cat is?” He makes a few vague gestures with his hands, not sure how to symbolise the crystal ball and card deck.

Fortunately, the young man seems to be able to understand.

Unfortunately, he just shrugs at Al. “I don’t know. She sometimes goes to different places.”

Al nods a thank you at him and continues his way along the stalls, silently cursing himself for not reacting better last night. Faster. Why didn’t he explain right away?

Well, he can’t change that now. In any case, she’s probably still around here somewhere. That’s what the guy meant, isn’t it? She just put out her rug somewhere else today. Somewhere in this town. If he walks around for a bit, he’s bound to find her.

So that’s what Al does. He spends hours just walking around the place. To be fair, he’d probably be much faster if he didn’t take wrong turns all the time and ended up back in the same place. Nothing about the way Italian towns are built makes any sense whatsoever.

By the time he actually finds her, he’s tired and sweaty and thirsty and his head hurts and there is a weird squeamish feeling in his stomach. The spots in his vision almost keep him from seeing her, but there it is—same sign, same rug, same weird curtain.

In face of the effort of actually finding the girl, Al’s previous reservations kind of fade away. Maybe he’s just to tired to worry about it at all anymore.

Either way, he just walks right up to the rug. The girl is talking to a middle-aged woman, telling her something about exciting new acquaintances she’s about to make, and without looking up at all gestures at another smaller sign: _Please wait your turn._

Al vision swims again. Then he throws up right there in the street.


	5. tell me your secrets (and ask me your questions)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al is, well, a bit dense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so that's basically the rest of the last chapter. I really hope there are no typos in this, I spent so much time writing it, I can't actually make myself read it another time. Enjoy!

Well, to be completely fair, ‘throwing up’ is a bit of a strong phrase. Al hasn’t eaten all that much today, or yesterday for that matter, so it’s mostly just the coffee from this morning. Not that it cheapens the effect.

Al can see a flurry of brown eyes looking back at him, hears a shriek, then his legs give out under him.

* * *

His head _hurts._ Al doesn’t think he’s ever had a headache like that before. Then again, thinking just hurts his head more, so he gives up on the endeavor completely. He presses his eyes back together.

There is something cold on his forehead. It’s cold and wet, and Al relishes it, like a small relief to the pain that’s still throbbing behind his eyelashes.

Al makes a small sound, then tries to speak properly.

“Dad?”

Someone says something, but Al can’t get the words to make any sense to him. It takes him a moment to realise that that is because the words aren’t even in English.

He blinks into light. It’s not very bright, but it feels like too much.

Where is his father? He always takes care of him when he’s sick. Maybe he’s at Hogwarts?

“Not your papa, boy”, says a voice, heavily accented, “Stay awake.”

Al tries to open his eyes fully, tries to make sense of the situation. It looks like he’s neither at home nor at the Hospital wing in Hogwarts.

He’s lying on some sort of tiny bed. The room he’s in is darkened, but he can feel the familiar pressure of the sun outside. The thought kind of makes him want to throw up again. He gags and almost does.

“Drink water”, the voice says and puts a glass to Al’s lips. Al swallows it down a bit to quickly, and the bad taste in his mouth with it.

He tries to sit up. His head is spinning, and it _hurts._ He tries to shake it away, but his neck is stiff.

“I’m sorry”, he mumbles, “what happened to me? I don’t- who are you?”

It turns out the person who has been talking to him is a woman, a little bit too old to be considered middle-aged.

“Me”, she says, and points at herself, “Paola. You” She gestures towards him. “colpo di sole.”

Al has no clue what that means.

She frowns. “Too many sun on your head.”

_Oh._

“Oh.”

The look she throws him is so disapproving Al wants to hide behind something. Then he remembers the situation.

“How did I get here?”

Paola shakes her head disapprovingly. “Friend bring you—Il Gatto Nero, good girl, I like.”

Al blinks, surprised. His memories are somewhat hazy, but they’re coming back. Right, he was looking for the girl he drew and then he—what, collapsed?

And he still didn’t give her drawing back to her. He reaches down to his pocket and there it is, tucked in. He tries to swing his legs out of the bed, but Paola stops him.

“No”, she declares firmly, “you need rest.”

Al takes a deep breath and the motion makes his head spin again. That’s probably as sign she is right.

“Made promise with your friend.”

“So she’s coming back?” _Okay, that is—_ Al isn’t sure if he should be happy or afraid. _What does that mean?_

Paola looks at him, still clearly exasperated, but there’s something else in her eyes, too. Something like a glint, maybe.

“Yes.”, she says, then turns toward the door. Before walking out, she turns back to Al. “You wait here. I bring you food.”

Al nods, dazed, hurting his head again. “Paola”, he calls out, “thank you!”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see her shake her head again and mutter something in Italian.

* * *

Waiting for the Black Cat—that seems to be what she calls herself, even if Al feels silly calling her that in his head—turns out to be a nerve-wrecking experience.

For one, there is his head that just won’t stop hurting like crazy. It also seems that Al has a pretty bad sunburn on his neck, which doesn’t really help matters.

Despite his initial confusion, Al manages to sort out what happened in his mind—and instantly feels extremely embarrassed about it. What the hell is he doing? How did he manage to get himself into _this_ situation?

Al thinks it might be the weirdest, most awkward and cringeworthy he’s ever acted. Seriously. The Black Cat (still a weird name) must think he’s some sort of stalker of something. For Merlin’s sake, he spent half a day looking for her after she confronted him about drawing her without her consent. That doesn’t sound like something a sane person would do. He had his reasons to be fair—still does—but doesn’t know that, how could she?

Al has an intense desire to slam his head against a wall. He decides against it—his head hurts enough already.

And with that thought, he almost throws up again. This _sucks._

It’s only when Paola brings him some food—pasta, they’re in Italy after all—that Al realises how hungry he actually is. Looking back, he can barely remember when he last had his full meal. He’s been getting by on snacks every now and then, to distracted by his big discovery to think about food too much. That was probably a mistake.

He makes sure to thank Paola appropriately and profusely, but she doesn’t seem too impressed by that. It’s understandable, really—he just showed up at her house, unconscious, and now she has to keep an eye on him out of civil obligation. He wonders when it would be a good time to pay her for that. It seems like this is some sort of small inn or something so he should at least pay for the food and the room.

She also brings him water—tons and tons of water, or so it seems to Al at least, and while she doesn’t exactly make him drink it, she clearly thinks it’s crucial for him to get better. He isn’t about to argue with her on that. Really, he isn’t about to argue with her on anything. He doesn’t think that would go over well for him. Besides, she’s probably right and he does want to get better.

After that, there isn’t much left to do but wait. And drink more eater of course. So that’s what Al does.

Hours pass.

By the time the door to the room with Al’s bed opens again, it’s been dark at least for an hour or two.

Paola steps in first, in her hand another jug of water. Behind her is the girl Al was looking for this entire morning.

She’s silent while Paola hands Al the jug. He tries to read her face, but he can’t figure out what exactly she’s thinking. Well, except what he already thinks she must think, about him being a creepy stalker, but her face offers no further clues.

Al thanks Paola for the water and she turns to say something to the girl in quick Italian. Then, Paola turns around and leaves the room.

Okay. Al takes a breath and steels himself.

He wonders if he should be the first to say something.

The girl drags a plain wooden chair standing in a corner over to the bed and sits on it, legs crossed, eyes intense.

Al’s fingers twitch. He wants to draw her again, paint her even, which is such a strange feeling to be directed towards a person. Al doesn’t draw people. Well, he does, sometimes for practice, or to help Fawley, or in the background, but not really in his proper pieces. It’s just not him. But now he wants to. It’s strange, and unfamiliar, and very inappropriate given the situation, so he controls the urge—not that he could act on it anyway—and promptly has to fight off a very different urge, which is to just throw up again. What is it with the nausea?

“I’m sorry”, Al starts, because he really is, but also because he’s extremely embarrassed and it seems like the best way to deal with that.

She blinks back at him for a little too long, which makes him want to continue.

“What for?”, she asks, but not in the way of someone who thinks he has nothing to be sorry about. More like she thinks there are several crimes to choose from.

Al swallows.

“For drawing you without consent, for one.” He hesitates. “And for possibly throwing up on your stuff? See, I was so stunned by the whole magical drawing thing yesterday that I completely forgot-”

He pauses, not sure how to phrase what he actually wants to say. Eventually he just reaches into his pocket and takes the little sketch out.

“I made that one first. You were very adamant that there were no pictures of you, so I wanted to give it to you. That’s why I came back today.”

The girl nods, a strange look in her eyes, different from before. Al still can’t figure out what she’s thinking.

He holds out the hand with the sketch and she takes it, carefully. For a moment Al thinks she might just tear it into pieces, but instead she unfolds it and looks at it. Al feels strange—as if it were himself that was under close examination, not the sketch. Eventually, she puts it into the pocket of her jeans—she’s wearing quite short ones that look like they used to be longer until someone cut them off.

She looks back down at him. “Why did you draw them at all?”

“Well, I-” Al fumbles with his words. _I saw you and I wanted to_ doesn’t really seem like enough of an explanation, even if it is the truth.

“I was just playing around, and I did it sort of on a whim? I wasn’t thinking. And then the picture started moving and I- I’ve been trying to do that for ages and it never worked before, so I guess I just got really excited and wanted to try again, that’s why I did the second one. I can’t believe it actually worked, it’s-“

Al shuts his mouth abruptly. This girl really doesn’t want to hear him rant about art. This is not about that, even if it’s the thing turning around Al’s brain. She doesn’t care about that. It’s pretty insensitive to bring it up at all. Why did he do that? Why the hell is he acting like this?

“So you are just a British art nerd?”, she says, still towering slightly over him in her chair while he half-sits, half-lies on the bed. But something in her voice seems softer, more relaxed.

Al blinks. “Well, yes?” He isn’t sure if it’s an insult, but at least she doesn’t seem too offended by his ranting.

Her shoulders slump a bit, but not like she’s disappointed. It’s more like a release of tension Al didn’t realise was there.

 _She’s relieved._ The sudden realisation startles Al. _Why did she think he was drawing her? So the Mafia could have a Wanted poster?_

“You’re just a British art nerd”, she says again and now Al really doesn’t know how to respond to that. Maybe it really is an insult.

“And a wizard”, she adds, “You’re a wizard.”

“Yes”, Al says, feeling a little bit like a parrot. _Maybe she’s having some sort of nervous breakdown? But why? Nothing’s happened._

“And you are a witch?”, he responds, trying to be polite.

“Obviously”, she says, “You saw what I do for a living.”

“Well, yeah”, Al replies. _But that’s not real magic though, just tricks for tourists._ But he really doesn’t want to offend her any further, so he keeps the thought to himself.

He rubs his burning neck with one hand, then extends it to her. “My name is Albus Potter.”

He waits for the penny to drop, but she just stares at his hand for a second, then takes it without a comment. At least she seems to be regaining her composure.

“And what’s your name?”, Al asks. Surely that’s the appropriate question in this situation.

She narrows her eyes. “I am The Black Cat”, she says.

Al nods. “I know, but, I mean, that’s not really a name, right?”

“I want to be called The Black Cat.”, she says.

_Okay, then._ Al decides it’s not worth it to question her on it further.

“Anyway”, he says instead, feeling kind of stupid, “I’m Al. Al Potter.”

“So you said”, she says.

 _Oh._ So she’s playing the Potter-thing cool then. That’s fine by Al. Actually, he thinks he might prefer it. That part of meeting virtually anyone new in the Wizarding World is something he could really do without, so if she isn’t going to make a big deal out of it, neither will he.

Then he remembers something else.

“Thank you. For bringing me here, I mean. You didn’t have to do that for me.”

She snorts. “What was I going to do? Just leave you there on the sidewalk to burn in the sun?”

Al feels his cheek go red and this time it has nothing to do with the sun. “When you put it like that… Thanks, anyway.”

She sighs and puts a hand into her pocket, retrieving a small vial, holding it out to him.

“Here. It’s a potion against sunstroke. It will help the symptoms go away faster.”

Al takes the vial and inspects it. He’s never heard of such a potion before, but then again, he didn’t take Potions on a NEWT level and sunstrokes aren’t that much of an issue in Great Britain. Well, less of an issue than in Italy for sure. He wonders if Rose knows that potion, though. Probably, considering she’s training to be a healer.

“Go ahead”, the girl says, “I am not trying to poison you.”

Al feels his cheeks heat up even more. Seriously, what _is_ up with him?

“I- uh, that’s not what I was trying to-“

To his surprise, the girl starts laughing. It’s a refreshing sound, nice and pure and has nothing of the grave intensity of her presence.

“Relax”, she says, “I was trying to make a joke.”

_Oh._

“Oh.” Al blushes even harder. He didn’t expect her to joke. She doesn’t really seem the type. Then again, that is probably silly. Everyone cracks a joke every now and then, right?

He unplugs the vial. “I just don’t know a potion like that, is all, so I was wondering about it.” He downs it in a big gulp. Even though he could have sworn it was lukewarm when it passed his lips, it feels chillingly cold down his throat.

Her eyes follow his movement and he feels her gaze on his throat. It makes him weirdly self-conscious.

“You don’t know much, do you?”, she says, sounding a bit disappointed.

Al puts the vial down. “What is that supposed to mean?”

She crosses her arms. “You don’t know how to do art magic, you don’t know about the sunstroke potion, and you don’t know how to avoid a sunstroke in the first place. It doesn’t look like a good track record.”

“I know some things about art magic”, Al says, indignant.

It’s true. Even though he can’t weave magic into his works like he wants to yet, he knows plenty of spells that can be used to make or improve art. He’s learned a few things in the last year.

“I’m figuring it out”, he concedes.

She shrugs. “I am pretty good with potions”, she says, “My main thing is divination, obviously, but there are a few things I can do with a couple of herbs. Also some blessings and curses, but they are not really my focus. What about you?”

Al curls his lips. He isn’t quite sure what she means. He graduated Hogwarts, and that’s where he learned all of his magic.

She misreads his hesitation. “Come on, you don’t have to tell me all your secrets, I just want to know what you specialise in. I don’t- I don’t know that many other wizards or witches my age.”

“You don’t?”, Al says, surprised. Doesn’t she have any friends from school? Coming to think of it, where do Italian wizards and witches go to school? Beauxbatons? That seems kind of far away. There must be a smaller school somewhere closer, Al supposes.

She just shrugs, still looking at him expectantly.

“Well”, Al starts, “I guess I took my NEWTs in Transfiguration and Charms. And Ancient Runes and Astronomy, but that’s not strictly magic I guess, just useful for it. Oh, and Defense against the Dark Arts, I almost forgot about that. But that was sort of a given I suppose.”

He also took one in Muggle Studies, but that definitely doesn’t qualify as knowing magic, so he decides to leave it out.

She doesn’t say anything.

“The NEWTs are our higher-level exams”, he adds, realising she might not know that, “Right now I’m trying to learn all sorts of magic that’s good for art.”

“That is pretty cool”, she says . Al tries to discern from her face whether she actually means it or not. She seems sincere—or at least she seems like the type of person that doesn’t hand out false compliments, but still. There really isn’t anything cool about him as he is, and he certainly hasn’t shown himself from his best side either.

“You are very focused on wands.”, she continues.

Al blinks. “What do you mean?”

“Well, charms, transfiguration, you use a wand for that, don’t you? That defense-thing, too, right?”

“I mean, yeah”, Al says, “Don’t you? Use your wand a lot I mean?”

She shrugs again. “I know a few simple spells, but not that much. I’m better with the other stuff I suppose.”

_Oh, okay._

“I can’t even imagine going a day without my wand”, Al says, “It’s like another limp.”

“Really?”, she seems genuinely surprised. “Maybe you can teach me some, then.” She averts her gaze. “Only if you want to, of course.”

“I, uh, sure”, Al says, “Why not?”

 _Why_ is he being so awkward? _Why?_

She looks back down to him, a new emotion in her face. Not surprise, not quite, something else… Boy, she really is hard to read.

Just as suddenly as it came, it’s gone again. She hops up from her chair abruptly and takes the empty vial out of Al’s hand.

“Well, in the meantime, try not to die in the streets somewhere.”

She’s at the door faster than Al can react, which is admittedly not very hard—it’s not a huge room. “See you around, then”, she says, and then she’s gone.

Al blinks to himself several times. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to make of all of that—of any of that, really.

But his head still hurts like hell and besides, it’s feeling very heavy all of a sudden and maybe it’s the potion starting to kick in—she really didn’t poison him, did she?—but that’s kind of stupid and also, thinking about it is too hard and Al’s just going to- he’s just going to sleep now. Yeah. Sleep.

-

Al sleeps right through until the morning, which is somewhat of a new experience. Waking up in the morning, that is. Well, not really, he’s done it for school for seven years and he’s pretty sure his parents made him get up at least somewhat early before that or maybe he did it himself back then, he can’t remember.

In any case, he wakes up early, like a normal well-adjusted person. The first thing he does it drinking a ton of water. He’s extremely thirsty. But once he’s done with that, he feels, well, actually, he feels mostly fine. A little hungry, maybe. The potion must have worked.

He summons his stuff from the hotel he was staying at. It’s not a lot, Al keeps most of it with him at pretty much all times.

Then, he tentatively goes to wish Paola a good morning.

She seems to be even more surprised at his condition than Al himself is, which probably means that the potion helped a lot.

Al eats some breakfast and then tries to pay Paola. She refuses, on the notion that she wants to keep an eye on him and if he doesn’t pay her, he can’t disappear on her, which is something she apparently suspects he would do.

At least that’s what Al can gather from her broken English and some good old-fashioned gesturing. She might not be entirely wrong. Still, Al feels compelled to point out that he could just leave without paying her at all, but he decides that’s probably not the smartest move.

Eventually, Al manages to leave the inn, not without promises to eat and drink water and an extremely ridiculous straw hat. He feels like an idiot wearing it, but then again, he supposes he felt much worse yesterday because he wasn’t wearing it, so he figures he can deal.

It takes some time to reorient himself. He’s not very far from the square where he met the girl—the Black Cat, he supposes—for the first time. He uses that place as a landmark and then works from there, finding back to the cheap hotel he was staying at originally and pays the bill. He’s pretty sure he’s not going to go back there.

After that, he walks through town a bit aimlessly. It’s still the morning. A weird feeling to Al. Usually he sleeps in the mornings, gets up in the afternoons, works through the evenings into the night. At least at home. His schedule has been a little different lately, savouring the sunlight for his art, but not that different. A leopard can’t change his spots after all, and neither can Al.

Being up like that in the morning—well, it just feels weird.

In the end, Al ends up in a bookshop. It’s not the type that really caters to tourists, specifically, meaning Al can’t even read most of the titles, but he does find a traveller’s dictionary, that translates simple words as well as pretty specific phrases like: “The toilet is broken.”

Al buys it and, remembering Paola’s words, goes to find a café around noon where he can eat a sandwich or something like that. More like “something like that”, really. Al isn’t sure if Italians do sandwiches, at least not like he knows them, but Al doesn’t really care. It’s food, and it’s actually good. Besides, he’s kind of invested in his weird not-quite dictionary and he ends up staying there way longer than he intended, trying to translate everything he can see, from the menu to street signs with varying success.

He tries to look up what “black cat” means as well, even if he doesn’t quite know why. It did say it on her sign, didn’t it? But Al can’t remember the exact words. He does find the word for black in the section about colours, though, and after a bit of searching he finds “cat” as well.

Two entries: _gatto_ and _felino._

Al wonders if there’s a difference in meaning or connotation, but the book doesn’t say. He’s pretty sure the sign said the first one. _Felino_ has a nice ring to it though.

“Felino.” He mumbles it out loud to himself, then he tries again, with more of an Italian accent.

“Felino.” Or at least with what he hopes sounds at least remotely like one.

He realises the person on the table next to him is staring and stops.

 _Italian,_ Al thinks, _is a beautiful language._

Maybe he should try to learn. He doesn’t really know what the point of that would be—as far as he knows Italy’s the only place it’s spoken and it’s not like Al plans to move here. Then again, Al is probably the king of investing too much time and energy in learning things that aren’t strictly useful. Maybe that’s why he’s a Ravenclaw. Curious, but without any purpose or ambition whatsoever. Yay.

He ends up getting out his art stuff again, but as he tries to start, he doesn’t really know what it even is that he wants to create. He has his visions, sure, paintings that have been starting to take form in his brain, waiting to be put on paper, or a canvas, or something, but today all of that seems just a little bit bland. Or, if not that, a little wrong somehow, or too far away.

In the end, he just takes out his dictionary again and studies it some more until the sun goes down. He returns to Paola’s inn feeling restless and unsatisfied with the day.

The next day looks much the same and so does the day after. He walks around, reads in that stupid book, stares at blank paper and blank canvases for a few hours until he gives up again and goes to sleep.

He just _can’t._

He’s not really sure what it is. He’s had art blocks before, periods of time without inspiration or any clue what to do, but this feels different. A different type of block, maybe. He has ideas, plenty of them actually, but none of them feel appropriate, none of them feel enough.

It makes him nervous and moody and fills him with a jittery kind of energy that makes him want crawl up the walls. It’s the energy that has driven him to walk through London all night before, and even chased him through France in a wild pattern.

On the third day, it occurs to him that he could just give into it. Release it by moving around the way he usually does; he could just move on to the next town. To the next experience, and to the next picture with it.

Except he doesn’t want to do that either. Maybe that’s why he can’t. But he can’t move on yet. He’s not finished here. He’s barely even drawn anything. Well, except the girl, of course, and the sunshades he was sketching on the same paper. But he doesn’t have those anymore, he gave them back to her. Which, obviously, was the right thing to do, but still. He needs something. Some piece to put all of this place into. He needs to do that.

He sighs. He might not have even painted or drawn anything else if he hadn’t given those things back. He might have left the same day and never thought about this place and the drawings again. But no, even the stupid sunshades are on there. He doesn’t have anything.

No, he’s lying to himself. He definitely would have thought about them either way. There’s magic in those pictures. He would have studied them obsessively in order to figure out how he did it.

Another thing he still doesn’t know.

Al kind of wants to smash his head against something.

This is the exact moment he feels a small hand on his shoulder. He jumps and almost fulfills his wish by slamming right there into the pavement, but he manages to catch himself.

“Cavalo!”

Al recognises the voice immediately and turns around.

“You scare easily”, she says. It’s The Black Cat.

“I was thinking”, Al replies, still getting over the surprise of seeing her. Sure, she said she’d “see him around”, but neither of them actually specified a time or a place, so Al wasn’t sure it actually counted. And sure, she was the one who said it in the first place, but Al wondered after if maybe it had just been some sort of cultural thing, just a way to be polite, nothing they were actually supposed to follow up on. Truth be told, he can’t really think of any reason she’d particularly want to talk to him again.

And then the past few days, he didn’t see her “around” at all, which only cemented his assumptions. Well, apparently, he was wrong. Still, that she’d seek him out like this…

She’s raised one of her eyebrows. “Thinking?”

Al happens to find this mildly insulting. Well, not really. Mostly he finds it amusing. People don’t sass him nearly as much as he’d like. _That,_ Al thinks, _is probably a messed-up thing to think._ He decides not to examine it.

He feels himself smiling. “I do that occasionally.”

“I am sure”, she says, plopping down next to him.

He’s sitting on some type of waist-high wall, looking at the business going on in the street. He’s not really sure if he’s supposed to be sitting there, to be perfectly honest, but it’s a good place to people-watch and nobody has complained yet, Al supposes he’s fine for now.

“What are you drawing?”, she asks, glancing at the sketchbook in his hands.

On a normal day, that would be positively traumatising—Al doesn’t really like to show his work around, least of all sketches. Most of them are messy, or not finished, or just concepts for bigger pieces. It’s like letting someone right into his head. Maybe even like letting someone read his diary. (Not that Al has a diary.) Sure, he doesn’t really mind Fawley looking at it, but that’s different—Fawley’s his teacher, after all, even if he doesn’t always give very constructive advice.

Today, however, the page he’s opened is completely blank—the way it’s been for the past few days.

“Oh”, she says. She sounds disappointed, but to Al’s intense relief she doesn’t try to look at any of the other pages.

“Did you manage to do it again, then?”, she asks.

Al blinks, shifting on the wall a bit to look at her better. His knees brush against hers and he shifts back, embarrassed. “What do you mean?”

She lowers her voice, even though there’s not really anyone close enough to listen to their conversation. “Putting magic into your art!”

Al can almost hear the _duh_ tacked onto that sentence, even though she probably wouldn’t say it like that. Still, it sounds like the question should be incredibly obvious. Maybe it is.

“I haven’t tried yet”, he replies.

He looks at her face again, sees her confusion, or maybe it’s irritation, and looks away again right away. She is still so intense, looking her directly in the eye is just a little too much.

“Why not?”

Al shrugs, not wanting to explain what he doesn’t really understand himself either. Why does she care, anyway?

But she doesn’t seem to be willing to let him off the hook.

“It’s just like that sometimes”, Al says eventually.

“Like what?”

“Merlin”, Al says, “sometimes it just doesn’t work out.”

“So you tried, and it didn’t work out?”

“No”, Al says, getting irritated, “I told you I haven’t tried yet. What’s it to you?”

She ignores the question. “So you _didn’t_ try and that didn’t work out? Maybe you should try, then.”

Al growls. “I’ve been trying!”

“You just said you haven’t tried.”

“I’ve been trying”, Al says, drawing out the last word, “to try.”

There’s a pause.

“I am not sure I follow”, the girl says.

Al is not sure he can hold off from strangling her. 

“Everyday”, Al says, exasperated, “I sit out here somewhere, with my sketchbook, and I want to start on something, but then I just don’t. I can’t even decide on where to start.”

“Why not?”

“I. Don’t. Fucking. Know.” Al spits the words through his teeth.

“Oh.”

_Yes, oh._

They’re silent for a little while. It gives Al time to consider again why she’s even talking to him at all. Maybe she’s taking revenge by bothering him. That’s essentially what he did, after all: bother her.

Well, if that was the goal, she’s more than met it. But she doesn’t seem like she plans to leave now. Is that what he wants? Al isn’t sure.

“Draw them, then.”, she says suddenly, startling Al out of his thoughts a second time.

He squints to see where she’s pointing. Two little girls, tourists probably, pressing their noses against a display of fancy Italian ice cream, pointing and giggling at each other. Looking down the street Al can see their parents approaching and wonders if they’ll buy the little girls some.

“I don’t usually draw people”, he says. And he doesn’t.

“You drew me”, she counters. “Just try to do whatever you did when you drew me and I am sure it will work.”

She clearly has no clue how seldom anything Al tries really works.

One of the little girls sticks out her tongue at the other and there seems to be some sort of small fight happening.

Al sighs. “You are so annoying”, he announces but he’s already reaching for his pencil, focusing on the spirit of the interaction he’s just watched.

He thinks about the girl’s awe at the mountains of Italian ice cream, their giggling and the inside jokes Al imagines they must have, like he does with his sister, how they know each other and how easily they can press each other’s buttons and how little reason they need to do so. And how little it matters, how easily they can make up. Except that it matters so much, right in this moment, right up until it doesn’t anymore.

His drawing is simple, just a little sketch, the girls, their blond hair, bleached by the sun and the matching yellow dresses, big eyes and the ice cream. He delves into the details slowly, adding shades and patterns, the way the hair falls and the sun’s reflection in the glass.

By the time he’s done, the girls are long gone, and Al didn’t even see if they ended up getting their ice cream. He’s almost sure he’s gotten something wrong, and a tiny glance at the place where they were standing confirms it. There are only four heaps of ice cream in one row, not five, like in his picture and the pavement looks different.

It doesn’t really matter for his drawing, though, it’s not the point.

And it really doesn’t matter. The magic’s there.

Al can just stare at it.

“It worked!”, the girl says next to him, in a tone that’s a weird mixture between whispering and shouting.

Al almost forgot she was there; he was concentrating so hard on the sketch.

Now she bumps her shoulder against his arm, reminding him of her presence. Al has no clue how he could forget it at all—it feels like a shock to his system.

“It did”, he confirms.

“So do you know how to do it now?”, she asks.

Al shrugs again. “Maybe?” He pauses. “I think I’m getting an idea of how it works. Maybe.”

To his surprise, she doesn’t say anything to that. Instead, she swings her right leg over the wall, facing his side.

“What do you know about stars?”

Al blinks. “What?”

“You said you studied astronomy”, she says.

“I did.”

Pretty intensely, too. Al remembers endless nights up studying, drawing celestial maps over and over again, from different places to different times. He’s pretty sure he can do the Northern sphere from memory.

Rose thought he was crazy when he said he’d take Astronomy for his NEWTs. “There’s nothing you can do with that!”, she said, which was pretty funny, considering she was taking it as well, even though she didn’t strictly need it for her career as a healer. Of course, back then, she didn’t even know she wanted to be a healer. She just took it because it’s useful for Potions and Herbology. Al didn’t take either of those. He took Astronomy because he liked it. At least they suffered together studying at stupid o’clock in the night.

“So tell me about it.”

Al has absolutely no clue what her deal is. But it would be kind of rude to refuse anyway—she just helped him overcome some sort of stupid block, so he can’t just leave when she wants to talk to him. Besides, it’s not like he wants to stop her from talking to him. He thinks. He just can’t figure her out is all. And he can’t figure out what he thinks about any of this.

“Well, what do you want to know?”, he asks tentatively. It’s the middle of the afternoon and the sun won’t go down for a while. It’s not like he can point out any constellations or anything if there aren’t any to see.

“Not sure”, she says, leaning back a bit, glancing at the cloudless sky.

Al shifts again, eventually putting his left leg over the wall as well, so that he’s facing her properly.

“I never really got into astrology”, she explains and Al feels compelled to point out that that’s not the same as astronomy _at all_ , but she just continues: “I know some people use the stars to tell the future, but I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem all that useful to me.”

Al snorts. “People pay you to tell them the future. You’d think you’d understand the appeal at least.”

“That’s not the same, though”, she says.

Of course she’s right—she just impresses them with tricks and tells them whatever they want to hear.

She leans back even further, resting the length of her back against the top of the wall. Al wonders how she can bear all the sun in her eyes. He’s still wearing the ridiculous straw hat Paola gave him.

“Individual people are so tiny. That’s why you can see their fates in crystal balls and cards and the palms of their hands, because those are small as well. But the stars are so big and important, they’re not gonna tell you any secrets about your love life. It’s all the big and really important stuff.”

“Wouldn’t that be more interesting to know?”, Al asks, momentarily forgetting that the whole conversation is completely hypothetical considering nobody can predict your love life from crystal balls either. Not really anyway.

She sits up abruptly, suddenly facing him again and Al is overwhelmed with how close they are sitting together all of a sudden.

“Do you really think so?”, she asks.

She’s smaller than him, even sitting down, which is funny because Al isn’t a very tall man in the first place. But she has to tilt her head to look at him properly.

“Do you really think that if you could know anything about the future at all, you’d want to know about wars and epidemics and revolutions?”

She’s speaking very quietly, almost whispering, but the tone of her voice doesn’t match it. Al can hear her perfectly. Her brown eyes are fierce, and Al remembers who she is again—even if he doesn’t really know that all—her presence and the power she exudes.

“I- uh, I don’t know?”, he stutters. His thoughts are flowing too slowly, like some sort of gooey mass where there should be clear water.

She relaxes suddenly, dropping back on the wall again and Al releases the breath he didn’t realise he was holding.

“Nobody ever wants to know about that”, she says, talking louder again, more normally, less gravity in her voice. “What everyone wants to know is “Does that person like me?” or “Is this the right career for me?” or “How can I heal from this terrible thing that happened to me?”. People might use different words for it—success, luck, friendship and love, even, but really it always boils down to the same question: “Will I be happy in the future?” That’s what everyone wants to know. I bet you do, too.”

 _She might not be entirely wrong about that,_ Al thinks and the thought unsettles him a bit. He pushes it away.

“And the stars can’t tell you that?”, he asks instead.

“They can’t.”, she says.

There’s another pause. Al wonders what she’s thinking about. Then something occurs to him.

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“How do you know that you can’t figure out, you know, the happiness-thing by looking at the stars? You said you didn’t even know any astrology. How would you know, then?”

She sits up again, but this time she shifts away from him. “Do _you_ know astrology?”

“Not a bit”, Al replies, “I just know astronomy, that’s different.” He blinks, a tad irritated. “But that’s not what I was asking.”

“I know it’s not the same thing.” She sighs. Al almost things she isn’t going to answer his question at all, she didn’t even want to tell him her name, for god’s sake, but she does.

“My grandmother.”, she says, slowly, like she’s pulling thorns from the soles of her feet, “She used to do it all the time. Look at the stars. Tell the future.”

“It didn’t make her happy?”, Al guesses.

To that, she really doesn’t reply, just shrugs as good as she can with her hands pressed to the top of the wall behind her.

“Well”, Al says, trying to diffuse the tension, “I still like looking at the stars. No need for the future to get between that.”

She looks at him again and for a moment, Al is scared she won’t find that funny, but rather tasteless, but the right corner of her lip tugs up just slightly. It changes her entire face. “What else do you look for, then?”

Al can’t help but smile as well.

“Well…”

* * *

They talk for hours. Al tells her about constellations and how they move, how there are different stars in different places and at different times of the year. It all seems pretty basic to him, almost too trivial to explain. He keeps feeling like he’s patronising her somehow, or maybe he’s being overly specific, but she seems to genuinely want to know. So Al keeps talking.

He kind of gets into it. It’s embarrassing really, but he can’t help it. He’s the kind of person that gets excited about knowing things and sharing that knowledge. He’s almost forgotten. He hasn’t done it in a while.

He talks, she asks questions. She doesn’t really offer any information of her own and from time to time Al feels bad that he’s the one doing all the talking, but every time he tries to back off and let her share, she just asks more questions.

The conversation falls quiet eventually, they’re out of topics, but surprisingly, it’s not uncomfortable. It’s kind of peaceful.

They watch the sun go down quietly and they both look out for the first stars coming out without having to talk about it.

“There!”, she says, pointing at the first, then the next, then the one after. Al follows her finger every time.

“The longer look the more you’ll see”, Al says, trying to orientate himself on the night sky. “It’s a shame. There’s so much light here, you can’t even see them properly.”

“I think we can see them well enough.”

Al shrugs. “There are a lot more we can’t see.”

Still, he does his best to point out the constellations he told her about and tries to name most of the stars. It takes some time to get back into it and it’s definitely harder without his telescope, but soon the hundreds of maps he’s drawn and studied start flashing before his eyes.

Eventually, their necks are stiff, and their eyes are tired.

Al blinks back at her shape as they’re leaving. Al’s going back to Paola’s inn, and she’s going—well, he doesn’t actually know.

 _What was that?_ , he thinks to himself. He has no clue how he ended up there, sitting on that wall talking about astronomy for hours. And drawing with her right there? _Did he even really do that?_

“Well then”, Al says, suddenly feeling shy again, “See you around?”

It’s too dark to see her expression.

“See you around.”

* * *

They find each other again. It’s not an everyday-thing—it’s not really a thing at all, Al tells himself—most of the days she’s out somewhere around town, working. Sometimes Al sees her, sometimes he doesn’t.

Every time he does, he kind of wants to draw her again, but he doesn’t—it wouldn’t be right.

Instead, he starts a new project. It’s supposed to be a map of the stars, but a painting as well. A painting of the night sky he guesses. Not the crappy one Al can see from here, but the real one, all the stars etched into his memory. He’s never painted that before. Why hasn’t he thought of that before? Probably because it’s a bit predictable and unimaginative and millions of people have done it before. _Whatever,_ Al thinks to himself, _I want to do it so who cares._

He shows her his ideas, his sketches. It’s weird that he does that, he knows, out of character considering his usual care with who gets to see his work, but it just feels like the right thing to do. She certainly doesn’t mind. Al thinks she likes his art and maybe that is why she keeps talking to him, but she’s still so hard to read.

Mostly they just talk. Talk about art, and about magic. Al tells her about pretty much everything he’s ever learned and some of them she knows in some form, some are completely unfamiliar to her. But even the things she seems to know a great deal about sound so different coming from her mouth. She has a completely different perspective, a way to look at magic that is totally different from how Al has seen it his entire life. Maybe a different way to look at everything at all.

She tells him about her magic, too. The potions she makes (there are different herbs in Italy than in Great Britain) and about community blessings and curses, a topic Al has never even considered at all.

And time starts to pass. At first, it’s a week, than three, than a month, then two. Al doesn’t really consider going anywhere else. It doesn’t cross his mind, at first, and when it does, he finds he doesn’t want to. It’s just—there’s not really any need. Not like before. So he just, well, he stays.

* * *

One night, he hangs around her rug while she’s working. Well, he doesn’t really hang around—he just sits nearby with his art stuff, waving at her when he arrives. She doesn’t wave but smiles back at him. He’s just starting to be able to handle that without looking away immediately.

He goes to work on his painting, and she keeps working, reading cards for everyone who comes to see her.

Al puts his paint away when the sun starts going down. There’s not enough light to keep working, even though he wants to. He doesn’t leave, though, sticking around instead, dwelling in his thoughts. It’ll be the end of August soon. He’ll need to go home. The thought makes his chest ache strangely, in a way he can’t quite quantify.

He enjoys the evening cooling the air around him a bit. It’s always so hot here, way hotter than it ever gets at home, even at night, but it’s still a welcome relief.

The Black Cat is still in full gear. It’s a beautiful night and there are tons of tourists out. Al can tell the business is good. She really is popular. He wonders if it’s enough for her to live on all year round. It’s a strange thought. He can’t even imagine her in the winter, much less what she’d be doing. She probably can’t imagine him back at home either. Then again, he doesn’t really do anything differently there, Al thinks. He just walks around and makes art all day—that’s basically the same thing as he’s doing right now.

It’s a little past midnight when she finally cleans up her stuff for the night. Al comes over to help, but there’s not all that much to do.

Al’s leaning against the wall again—the very same wall they were sitting on that very first time. The reminder makes Al smile.

She leans into his side.

“Hello, Felina”, he says.

She gives him a small shove, but obviously can’t be bothered to protest properly or even pull away from his chest.

It’s a nickname he’s given her—from “felino”. Since she didn’t want to tell him her name, that’s what she’s getting. Al doesn’t think she minds that much.

“I am exhausted.” She’s mumbling in his shirt and Al almost can’t understand her. He sort of wants to bring up an arm around her, but he isn’t sure if she would appreciate that.

“My magic is all out.”

“I’m not sure it works like that.”, Al tells her quietly.

“Easy for you to say when you use a wand for everything”, she says. She turns her face away from his shoulder again and her voice becomes a little bit clearer again.

“Nothing stopping you from doing that.”, Al says, then pauses. “What do you mean, it’s easy for me to say?”

She makes a groaning sound, hitting her head against his arm, way harder than her earlier shove.

“Hey!”, Al says.

“I knew from the start that you were a clueless idiot”, she declares. There’s no malice in her voice.

Al chuckles. “Well, then it’s your own fault.”

“So true.” She sighs and slumps against him a little harder. “And you always want to talk shop.”

By which she means, he always wants to talk magic. Which, frankly—

“That’s rich coming from you.”

She doesn’t argue, which is probably her personal way of agreeing. If Al always wants to talk shop, she’s even worse.

“Wands direct your magic, that’s why it’s easier to do magic with them. When you don’t use one, your magic just sort of floats around and you end up using more than strictly necessary.”

“I guess that makes sense”, Al muses, “But then again I’ve never done magic without a wand.”

She groans again, turning her face into his arm. “Are you serious?”

“Yes?”

“I have seen you use magic without a wand before”, she says, “what do you think you are doing when you make one of those pictures?”

Al wants to shrug, but he also doesn’t want to disturb her, so he leaves it. “That’s not the same.”

“If you say so”, she replies, sounding unconvinced. “I know that I used a lot of my magic today.”

Al frowns. “Reading cards, you mean?”

“Of course reading cards, what else have I been doing all day?”

This time Al really does shrug. “I don’t know. That’s not real magic, though.”

She tenses and shifts, leaning back to stand on her own feet. “What? What do you mean?”

He can feel the conversation taking a bad turn, but he can’t stop himself. “Well, you just lay the cards down and then you tell the person something about it. Not a lot of magic involved, is there?”

She turns to face him properly. “Are you serious?”

“Yes?”

“And you think that anybody could just lie some cards somewhere and somehow predict the future like that?”

_Shit. She’s mad._

“Well, no”, Al says, “I’m aware that there’s, you know, a technique and you need some skills for it.” He can’t help himself. “But that doesn’t make it magic.”

She huffs. “Of course it is magic. How else do you think it works? Do you think just anyone can do it?”

Al furrows his brows. “I mean, you’d have to learn how to make it convincing, I guess, but-“

“Convincing?” Her voice is shrill, which sounds strange on her. She usually has a really deep voice.

“People have to believe you”, Al says, feeling a bit helpless, “if you can’t make them think you’re really telling them the future-“

“They believe me because I do!”, she says.

Al blinks. _Does she think he doesn’t know that those things are always scams? Or does she actually believe it herself?_ She doesn’t give him time to say anything either way.

“Why would you think that I am just lying?”

“Because telling the future is impossible”, Al says, voice small and toneless, but firm, nonetheless.

“Really? I can’t believe you!” She’s not yelling, not even talking loudly but it feels like she is. “You can transform mice into teacups, and you summon your things to you when you need them and you drink magic potions, but you don’t believe that I can tell the future?”

It does sound stupid when she says it like that. But still—those are things he has known for all his life—fortune tellers are scams. And he’s fine with that, it’s not like she’s really hurting anyone, but that doesn’t make it any less fake.

Besides—they’ve been talking about different types of magic all summer and never once did she bring up divination at all, even though she sells it to various people everyday. Surely, she would have brought it up if it were real.

“Listen”, he says, “It’s fine, I don’t care that it’s fake. It still takes a lot of skill and the people that come to you get their fun, so whatever. I’m not judging you.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

She stomps her foot on the ground and he can feel her entire figure shake with frustration.

“I can’t- you-“ She takes his hand and drags him a few meters away under a streetlight. “Here!” Her voice is full of venom. “I will show you.”

She turns his palm up in her hand, her touch suddenly gentle instead of rough. She turns him so she doesn’t cast a shadow on their hands and furrows her brows to look at it closely. She’s not looking at his face, though, and Al feels strangely vulnerable. Her thumbs slide up and down his hand in a practiced fashion, measuring out the distances between the creases.

“Oh.”, she says suddenly, her voice soft again. “That is—wow. I didn’t think-“

“What?”, Al says, releasing his breath. He didn’t realise was holding it. Somehow, the tension is too much, and he snaps his hand back and puts it into his pocket. She lets him, her frustration overpowered by something else.

“Well”, she says, her voice hesitant, “it looks like at some point you are going to get very, uh, rich.”

Al gapes. He needs a moment to gather his thoughts.

“Okay, listen. You don’t have to tell me this kind of stuff to—I don’t know to please me or whatever. I am an artist in an extremely niche field with a tiny audience. There’s no way I’ll ever get rich and I’m fine with that. Just—don’t do that. You don’t have to tell me lies you think I’ll like.”

“I’m not lying. That’s just what it says.”

“Merlin!” Now Al feels the anger rising in his own chest. “Just drop it! I’m telling you, it’s fine, I don’t care, you’re doing a great job either way, people love you and I get that it takes skill and whatnot, but just stop. Just don’t tell me any bullshit, all right? I don’t want that.”

He can’t even believe she would think he would want that. What does she even think of him? Is that how she sees him? Just some money-crazy asshole that needs to have his ego stroked?

She just stares at him for a moment, seemingly petrified by his harshness. He’s never seen her frozen like that before. It’s like oil on his fire.

“You know what? Screw this!”

And he stalks away in the evening.

* * *

Al spends the next day brooding. That is to say—he tries to. The universe isn’t really making it very easy for him.

For one, there is Paola, who is better at making sure that Al can never truly sleep in (as in: hide from his feeling under the covers) than any alarm clock could ever be. If he hasn’t shown his face by ten a.m. (which Paola, by the way, treats the same way as other people would getting up at 2 p.m.) she takes his pillow away.

Al honestly doubts she does that with any of her other customers but with him, apparently, it’s okay. He suspects it has something to do with the way they met.

So instead of letting him stay in his room all day and play dead under a blanket, she makes him eat breakfast and drink water. She still thinks Al will drop on the street on any given day, even though that hasn’t happened even once since, well, the time it happened.

“Your heart is sick, boy?”, she asks him while basically dragging him to breakfast.

Al blinks. What is she on about now? He rests a hand against his chest. His heart is doing just fine, why wouldn’t it be?

“My heart is okay”, he tells her.

She doesn’t look like she quite believes him. She has that look about her that is half pity and half disapproval, or maybe disappointment, though he has no clue at what.

“I’ve never in my life had any cardiac troubles!”, he calls after her as she shuffles off to attend to her business, but she doesn’t pay any attention to it, if she can even understand it.

Al wants to smash his head against the table. He doesn’t, though, because he’s a rational and well-adjusted human being. _Yeah sure._

In the end, he leaves the house just to escape Paola—he doesn’t really want to, but if he doesn’t, she’ll really think there’s something wrong with him.

He starts walking around aimlessly, but then thinks better of it. It’s a beautiful day and she is surely out working. He doesn’t want to run into her.

He doesn’t really know where to hide from her, either, and in the end he walks back into that book store where he bought that weird travel-dictionary-thing what feels like a million years ago. It’s in his bag now, well-thumbed and with dog ears. He knows it almost by heart by now, even though his pronunciation is terrible. She always teases him about that—but he’s angry at her, he doesn’t want to think about her, so he pushes that away.

Instead, he goes looking for an actual Italian language textbook. It takes him a while, but he manages to find one. He picks it up and starts to read, his mind falling completely into the beauty of the language.

He resurfaces only a couple hours later, feeling significantly calmer. There is something about knowledge that will do that to you. Or to Al it does, at least.

The shopkeeper is eyeing him suspiciously, which is probably understandable considering Al has been in the shop for literal hours. Sighing, Al gets up and pays for the book.

He steps outside and freezes.

She’s leaning right against the wall of the shop.

The sudden sight of her leaves him speechless for a second, but not for very long. He can’t believe she’s here. He can’t believe she would just lie to him about some stupid, obvious crap and then come and follow him around.

“Are you stalking me or something?”, he says, the irritation stark in his voice. “I can’t-“

“No.”

He falls silent immediately.

She inhales, long, then breathes out hard. “Okay, you listen to me. Divination is a respected field of magic and it has been proven many times that it is _real._ ” The air quotes in her voice are audible even if she doesn’t actually make them with her fingers. “There is a long-documented history of true prophecies.”

She takes a deep breath. “You need magic to tell the future the same way you need magic to make a potion or draw a picture that moves. It just doesn’t work when you don’t have any magic.” She makes a small break, then adds: “Which should answer your original question about why I was exhausted.”

She pauses again. “Divination is a bit more complicated, I suppose, because not even all wizards can do it. You need a special talent for it. I have it and there are other people who have it, too. And I’m sure there are more people in England.

In any case”—Her eyes positively flare at this—“I don’t need to prove that to you again and it was stupid of me to try. I get why you wouldn’t believe that particular piece of information but that is what I saw. I _know_ it’s true.” She takes another deep breath.

”And if I wanted to convince you of something with a lie, don’t you think I would have thought of something better?”

She’s breathing heavily as if she’s just run a marathon.

Al can only stare at her.

She has a point there—he knows she’s smart enough to know he wouldn’t believe in such a plump lie—and he might have believed her about the stupid divination in general if she didn’t say that. It’s just ridiculous. He won’t ever be rich. He’s a magical artist for Merlin’s sake. It’s not even something he aspires to and frankly unrealistic to expect. Even if he doesn’t really know what he _does_ want—the idea that she thinks that that’s what he wants, that that’s what he values, bothers him immensely.

But she’s not stupid either. She’s right, there’s no real reason she would tell such a stupid lie.

He sighs. “You’re right. If you wanted to sweet-talk me into believing something you would have thought of something better.” At least he really, really hopes so.

She huffs. “Well, _thank you_ ”, she drawls, looking at him expectantly.

“I still—I, I just don’t believe that’s true.”

She stares at him, then turns around on her heels. She only makes two steps before Al catches up to her, and stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

She turns back towards him almost violently, sending his hand flying.

“I mean, I believe you when you say it’s what you, I don’t know, saw, I guess. I just don’t believe it’s true.”

She laughs, the expression completely void of humour. “So you think I am crazy, but at least I am not a liar? That is reassuring.”

“No, I-“ Al groans in frustration. “You are right, it’s stupid of me to assume that divination isn’t real just because I can’t do it and nobody else I know can either. And I can see how good you are at this stuff, so I believe you when you say you can tell the future.”

He’s been turning the information around in his mind in the past few minutes even more than last night. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Foremost, it’s the only thing Al wants to believe.

“So” He sighs. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t fair to you.”

“You should be.”

“I am!”

To his surprise, she sighs as well.

“Why are you being so rational? Now I don’t even get to throw it in your face properly.”

Despite himself, Al has to laugh.

“It’s not that funny”, she says.

Al stops. “I’m sorry”, he says, “it was just-“

 _It was just what?_ He doesn’t really know what he wanted to say. Suddenly, he feels very flustered.

“…I don’t know.”

“But you think I’m still wrong about you?”

He almost doesn’t want to say it but there’s no use in lying. “Yes.”

She looks up at him, not saying anything.

“I think you probably just got it wrong. You said yourself you were exhausted.”

She opens her mouth as if she wants to say something, then closes it again and shakes her head. “I know-“

“It doesn’t matter either way”, Al interrupts her. He doesn’t want to discuss this. It’s giving him a headache already and the less he talks about this, the faster he’ll forget about it—and then he won’t have to lie around feeling pathetic because he isn’t actually doing anything at all in his life, even though fate (or whatever) says he should be wildly successful.

“We should just go back to doing—to doing what we’re doing. Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be working today? It’s the weekend, isn’t it prime time for your work?”

“Al. Al, calm down.”

Al swallows down the stream of meaningless blah-blah bubbling up in his throat. “Why are you- really here, though?” is the only thing that ends up coming out, each of the words smaller than the ones before.

He looks down at her face. Her eyebrows are crunched down, she looks annoyed.

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

“I- Uh, sorry?”

Her chest rises slowly. “I can’t believe—just—you are such an idiot!”

Al can’t think of any suitable answer to that—and he doesn’t get the chance to, because right in that moment, she grabs him by the collar, steps up on her tiptoes, and kisses him.

_Oh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'm excited to hear your opinions about it! Thanks for reading!


	6. you take your heart (and walk away)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al represses basically all of his emotions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finally made myself proof-read this chapter. I hope there are no typos, no weird mistakes and awkward phrasing left, but that's probably too much to hope for.   
> In any case, enjoy.   
> (If you're hoping for this chapter to get super romantic, I'm sorry, because it's really not.)

“Oh.”, Al says, after she pulls away.

He tries for something more intelligent, but his brain just draws up a blank. It’s too occupied with processing the idea that this happened and how it felt and how _he_ feels and— It simply doesn’t have space for trivial things like intelligent conversation.

Instead, he watches her eyelids flutter, as she steps back down from her tiptoes, blinking up at him. Her mouth is still open.

“Yeah”, she replies, sounding more breathless than is probably normal for a tiny, chaste kiss like that. Al doesn’t blame her. He isn’t even sure if he’s breathing at all right now.

He finally remembers how to speak again.

“I didn’t think you—well—”

(Sort of. He sort of remembers how to speak again.)

“Yes.”, she says, still sounding breathless, “I thought it was obvious.”

Al shakes his head slowly. “I didn’t—no, not really I guess”

“Oh.”

It’s a tiny sound, but it’s mesmerizing. Al can’t stop staring at her, everything else at the corners of his vision just fades away. He barely even notices.

He watches the blush rising in her cheeks.

“Was that okay?”

Al nods, just slowly at first, then more quickly. “Yes”, he breathes.

And with that, they kiss again.

* * *

The next days come in a haze of giddy happiness mixed with constant clouds of wonder, marvel at how any of this actually happened. And then, beneath that, is the constant crippling sense of insecurity, of doubt what any of this even means.

It sounds so absurd when he lies in bed in the evenings, or when he wakes up in the mornings, so much so, that he has to wonder if it’s all just a strange dream, or a hallucination, the idea that she likes him at all like that, even if he’s not quite sure how far “like that” even reaches.

Sometimes he wants to ask, wants to put it into clear terms, wants to say something. But he’s also a bit scared to break the spell, as if saying something could stop it from becoming a reality.

He thinks in this case it might.

Even the first time he met her, he had had a hard time figuring her out. Even back then, he remembers thinking she was so closed-off, more so than any other person Al’s ever met. Certainly more than he himself.

He considered himself a bit closed-off this past year, but he’s got nothing on her. And at some point, without him noticing, that shut door has opened just a little. But if he tries to push at it, Al worries that it will just shut again. He doesn’t want that. It’s the opposite of what he wants.

This is what he thinks when they are apart.

When he sees her again, most of his worries about closing off and shutting doors just sort of disappear. At some point Al wonders if it’s some weird type of magic—some mind-altering spell that replaces worrying and overthinking with giddiness and optimism, but only when she is in sight.

He thinks this hypothesis over for about two minutes before deciding he’s being stupid. There’s no magic involved here. It’s just—well, it’s just something he doesn’t quite want to name yet.

Too soon.

“Too soon” is a problem that seems to be haunting him. Or perhaps, more aptly put, chasing after him.

Summer is ending. Summer is ending and that means Al has to leave. Those are the final days of August and as soon as September starts, he has to be back in London.

When he finally chokes out the words, they are sitting on the wall again, closer than they would have before. In his especially soft moments Al calls it “their spot” in his head, but that is also that—too, uh, well, maybe not so much too soon as just too much.

“I need to go home.”, he says.

She stays completely still in his arms, so much so that Al thinks she didn’t hear him.

“I need to go home.”, he repeats, this time a little bit louder. The words hurt in his chest.

“You said that.” She’s still not moving, not reacting at all.

“Oh.”

She rests her head against his chest.

“When?” Her voice is still so calm, as if she doesn’t care at all. Maybe she doesn’t.

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Oh.”

They are quiet for a moment.

Then, she takes his hand and squeezes it. The pain in his chest sharpens. Too much, too soon. Al’s not sure if he can take this at all. This mass of feelings, half of them he can’t even name and it all is just supposed to go into this tiny conversation. It’s not enough, but it’s the only thing there is.

“I can send you an owl.”, he says, feeling desperate and sad and like he might cry and also like he might explode if he doesn’t say something, something that can make this less too soon, less absolute.

He can feel her shake her head more than he can see it. “No.”

Her words are too soft for the lurch in his heart. He’s glad she can’t see his face. “Oh”, he says, “okay then-“

She shakes her head again. “No, I mean you can’t.” There is something in her voice now, too, an emotion Al can’t quite discern. Just like it always is with her. “Your owl won’t find me.”

“Owls find everybody.”, he says. He knows this—everybody who’s ever sent an owl knows that. It’s why they use owls in the first place—they can find everyone and bring them their letter. And even if Al thinks it’s not the most efficient system, it does work. This is a solvable problem. Actually, it’s a non-problem.

Or maybe she’s just trying to be nice about dumping him.

“Not if you take precautions against being found.”

 _Oh-that’s not-_ It’s not something he expected her to say _._

“You’re taking precautions against me sending you mail?” He really hopes that’s not it. But it also wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for her to say that.

She sighs. “Not you.”

“Oh.”, he says, like he understands, but really, he understands absolutely nothing.

There’s a long pause. Al’s trying to sort his thoughts, trying to figure out what she’s telling him there. Does she want to stay in contact or not? Does she never want to see him again?

“Hey, Al?” Her voice takes him back to the present.

“Yeah?”

“Do you think you will ever go on a holiday again?”

Al blinks. But even though he is still an utterly clueless, bumbling idiot, he’s starting to speak this language of hers, even if he doesn’t really understand why it always has to be like that, implied intentions and half-invitations.

“I think”, he says, very quietly, “that next year, when July starts, I might take another holiday. And” He takes a deep breath. “I think I might come back to that Italian town again I visited once.”

“I think”, she says, “I think that would be good.”

* * *

Leaving feels like a dream. Not in the way people always say that something feels like a dream—too good too be true. Al’s dreams aren’t like that. They’re disjointed and confusing, and everything’s happening way too fast. And his head feels like it’s wrapped into some kind of cloud and he can’t think properly. Yes, that’s what it feels like.

There’s not much of a good-bye for the two of them, not a proper one anyway. Maybe because Al doesn’t really want to say good-bye, maybe because neither of them really knows what to say. In the end, it’s just a measly “See you around”. There really is nothing else.

The worst part is, it doesn’t exactly stop once he’s home. The weird dream-cloud-state, that is.

Coming back is not a big affair like leaving was. Al thinks it’s mostly due to the fact that he has been somewhat vague about when he’ll be back at all. His memories of why he did that exactly are a bit hazy now. He knew the exact day he needed to be back, because he eventually needs to go to the _Nightowl_ to work again. Technically, _Monica,_ also known as his manager, is the one who is best informed about his return. Well, and Fawley of course.

Whatever his thought process was in bringing about these circumstances (probably his general need to keep things secret for absolutely zero reasons), he’s thankful for it when he slips back in the flat quietly and can just fall into bed without having to greet anyone, not even Fawley, who’s asleep at the time.

He sleeps peacefully in the sense that he’s cold out until four in the afternoon, which is a long time to sleep even considering the time he came back.

Fawley tries to interrogate him about everything he’s done and seen over tea, but Al is too absent-minded to actually focus properly. It’s a bit embarrassing, to be perfectly honest, and probably also kind of rude, but Fawley doesn’t take offense and eventually they just move on to the art Al made while he’s been away.

Maybe not so surprisingly, it’s an easier topic. It’s art. And really, it holds much of the same information, encapsulates his experience probably better than he ever could in words. Well, except one pretty crucial part.

He never drew her again after those first two drawings.

He kind of wishes he had. He wishes he had painted a goddamn mural. Well, maybe not a mural. He couldn’t have taken that home with him. But some huge, beautiful, perfect painting.

He almost yearns for it.

Of course he could still try to paint it (the shape of her face is burned into his brain after all), but he already knows he won’t. It doesn’t really stop him from wanting, though.

Really, there’s no way to win. It should be considered a way of torture.

If not for him, then it probably is for everyone else who has to deal with him.

At least that’s what he thinks when he fails to stock the bar properly for the third time in the same night. He’s so far off his game, it’s not even funny. And it’s a busy night, too. Cath must be so annoyed.

In his dazed state it takes him a few more hours to notice that’s not actually the case.

Cath, while _she’s_ clearly still very much on top of her game, seems, well, different. Not in a bad way, really, just different.

Different enough not to get on his case about basically everything immediately. Usually, he would be thankful for it, but apparently, he’s gotten so used to her usual nosy ways that it almost startles him.

“Are you doing okay?”, he mouths to her sometime in the wee hours of the morning as it’s starting to quiet down a bit. (Key word here being a bit. There’s still plenty of business— it’s busier than Al remembers this place usually being. Must be the aftershocks of the summer.)

She blinks down at him as if she’s seeing him for the first time. Or at least for the first time today, which definitely isn’t true, seeing as they’re pretty far into their shared shift, which very much involves them seeing each other, let alone working together. “Huh? Yeah, sure.”

So she’s distracted, too. Al winces internally. It’s almost a miracle that between the two of them they haven’t had a minor accident yet. Then again, he’s the only one who’s suddenly become incompetent. If anything, Cath is more efficient than ever—more energized, more cheerful, even more patient with one of the drunk guys that make clumsy, inappropriate moves on her. Cath’s usually graceful about those things—but also privately annoyed. Today, however, she just brushes it off.

Funny how noticing someone else’s distractions can help pull Al out of his own head. Al almost sympathises with Carol—his other co-worker, that, according to Cath at least, always comes up with the most ridiculous theories about Al’s private life. The new perspective really makes Al wonder what’s going on in her personal life that she needs to speculate so much about his. Except, no, he really definitely doesn’t want to know at all.

And that’s how he sinks back into dreamland. (Weird, disjointed dreamland, but still.)

“Oh, Al”, Cath says, as they’re quietly changing in the back room again. She’s for once not wearing her hair in a ponytail. It makes her look a lot younger. Not childish, but a bit less, well, confrontational. That’s probably not the right word. Intense? Al shrugs it off. He’s too tired to play scrabble. Or whatever the game looking for the right word in his head is called.

“Yeah?”

“Would you do me a favour?”

Al yawns. “Sure, what do you need?”

She throws him a look, but just continues. “I want to switch a shift.”

Al blinks, slowly, and has to try really hard not to just let his eyes fall shut. “Don’t we already have basically all our shifts together?”

“Not the day shifts.”

Al looks up. “You want to have one of my day shifts?”

She shrugs. She really does look different with her hair down. “No, I want you to take one of mine.”

Al shrugs. It’s not like he really has any big plans. It doesn’t matter that much when he works. Though he didn’t know that Cath had any morning shifts at all. As far as he was aware, Cath goes to uni in the mornings. Then again, he doesn’t really know how any of that works at all.

“Why, you have a date or something?”, he says, mostly because he knows that’s what she would say to him. He doesn’t really expect an answer, mostly because he certainly wouldn’t give one.

But Cath smiles at him brilliantly. “Yes, actually, I do.”

_So that is it!_

Al can’t help but smile right back at her. Good thing that one of them is happy.

“In that case”, he says, “consider it done.”

* * *

It’s almost strange how easily Al falls back into routine. Sort of, at least. It’s mostly what his routine was before, he thinks. Working, painting, running errands for Fawley, trying to keep the flat in one piece. It’s a bit different from before, though. Everything keeps feeling not quite real and dream-like. He’s kind of distracted and bad at everything. It kind of sucks. He tries, though.

He’s pretty sure Fawley can tell. He probably could even on that first morning (well, late afternoon to be precise, but is time even real?), but he definitely knows something is up in the days following. At the very latest when Al shows him his newest sketches—the ones that can move. He must know, Al thinks. He must know that something has changed.

But Fawley only smiles faintly at the pictures, then looks at him.

“Well done.”

Al just has to smile back. He _is_ proud of it after all. Everything else has been overwhelming him too much to think about that, but he can feel it now. “Yeah”, he says, looking back into Fawley’s scarily blue eyes.

Fawley holds him gaze for a moment, and Al thinks he might want to say something else, in the end, he just gets up to get the kettle.

“I told you”, he calls over his shoulder, “You just need to picture what you see!”

Al grins. He thinks he gets it now. Or at least, he gets it a bit more than he did before. A little tiny bit.

* * *

He gives himself a week before he tells his parents he’s back—his parents and Rose and Scorpius. He just wants to, well, feel normal again before he talks to them again.

That’s his plan. Get normal again, then go talk to them.

It doesn’t quite work. It doesn’t work, because the feeling still won’t go away.

Al knows he can’t not socialise forever. Well, maybe he could, but really he can’t because he knows if he pushes it for too long, Fawley will get on his case, the same way he did when they first met.

So after a week, he figures he can’t hold off any longer. On his morning post run, he takes two of his own letters with him to the post office and sends an owl to both his parents and his friends. He sighs as he leaves Diagon Alley through the Leaky Cauldron.

 _This is still the most bothersome way to contact people_ , Al thinks. Then he thinks about how he can’t send an owl to Felina (because that’s what he calls her now, even in his head) and the cloud is back again.

He’s so occupied with it, he almost doesn’t hear the voice calling his name.

“Hey, Albus!”

He turns around after all.

It’s a pale girl with dark hair and a strong chin. It takes Al a second to recognise her. “Hi, Mirasol.”

Mirasol used to be a classmate of his, even a housemate, in Ravenclaw. They’ve always been on good terms, but never very close, especially not in the later years.

“Haven’t seen you in a while.”, she says, “What have you been up to?”

Al smiles, but cringes internally. He doesn’t think he has the energy for small talk, even though he likes her well enough and she’s just trying to be nice.

“Oh, you know, just up and around.” He looks her up and down, looking for a way to deflect the attention. “Do you work here now?”

She smiles. “Yeah! Just trying to figure things out, you know?”

She sounds cheerful. Al smiles at her, a little bit more sincerely. Oh, he knows.

“Yeah.” He only leaves a small pause before he continues. “I’m sorry, I need to get going-”

“Sure”, she says, “see you!”

Al returns the sentiments, leaves the pub and sighs again. Did he really forget that literally everyone knows him here?

Oh god, he definitely forgot. Well, it was nice while it lasted, he guesses.

Wizarding Britain is small enough as it is and since they basically all go to school together, everyone that pays a little attention knows everyone anyway. If you’re Harry Potter’s son, it’s just a tiny bit worse.

Well, now he’s back. Back in the mill, he supposes. (Except not really, because he spends half his time in the Muggle World and the other half hanging out with an old artist that’s also not particularly involved with Wizarding Society.)

Al goes back home and sinks into his art for a bit, but it’s not long before Rose’ owl reaches him.

_Dear Al,  
so good to hear you’re back! Meet up tonight at Leaky Cauldron?   
Love, Rose_

Short and sweet. He can tell she wrote it in a hurry, her usually immaculate handwriting just a little bit rough.

He considers delaying meeting up for a day or two, but eventually decides there’s no point, really. He doesn’t think it’s going to get any better in that time, and besides, he does miss them. They’re still his best friends, even if he’s half a shut-in with issues and maybe (possibly, probably, surely) maybe a broken heart. Something like that anyway.

He only needs to work later at night, so he scribbles his response on the back of the note and sends the owl on his way. Then he lies down to get a bit more sleep.

Sleep is good. Sleep is—yeah, sleep.

* * *

Rose hugs him so tightly, he almost can’t breathe.

“Whoa”, she says, “You look” She makes a small pause. “tan.”

Al raises brow. “Why am I under the impression that you actually wanted to say something else?”

She shoves him, but not very hard. “Because you’re an idiot, that’s why.”

Al can’t help but smile. “I’ve only been back for five minutes and there you go, giving my confidence a mortal blow.”

She laughs. “I think you will survive.”

“Only, just barely, only just barely.”

Scorpius isn’t in his wheelchair today, using crutches instead—the stylish ones, as Rose calls them. To Al, they just look old-fashioned, wooden ones, the kind he can clench between his arms and his sides.

He still manages to hug Al.

“You really are tan.”, he says. With him, Al knows that he definitely didn’t want to say anything else. He’s kind like that.

Al shrugs. “Lots of sun in Italy, I guess.”

The thought makes him think of sunstrokes and Felina, which in turn makes him zone out for a solid minute, while they head for their booth.

“Hey, Al, are you in there?”

He shakes his head, falling back into reality. This is his life now. This is how he’s doing things now. Getting nostalgic over sunstrokes of all things. He’s pretty sure he’s never been this sappy. He hates it. Mostly he hates that he has zero control over it.

“Sorry”, he says, “I was just thinking about something.”

They don’t seem too bothered by it, but Al still vows to do better. He can’t keep doing this. He needs to have enough focus to talk to his friends properly. And to work. And to make small talk on the streets. He needs his head back.

“So, was it exciting?”, Scorpius asks.

“Travelling?”, Al asks, trying to stay on topic.

“Yeah, what else?”

Al shrugs. “I don’t know. The trip over from my flat?”

They laugh.

 _Yes,_ Al decides, _humour is good._ Humour is how he’s going to do this.

“It was…”, he starts as they quiet down. He needs a moment to find a good adjective. “It was fun.”, is what he settles for. It doesn’t really encompass everything at all, but at least it’s true. He did have a lot of fun on his travels. “Very different from here”, he adds.

“I guess that’s the point”, Scorpius says and Rose nods.

Al realises that he doesn’t want to tell them. Not really. Not about her, certainly—he’d feel like a complete fool—but not about anything he was doing, really. It’s not that he’s ashamed, it’s just—well, he hasn’t had time to process any of this. To make out what he thinks of it himself. He doesn’t want to sully it with anyone else’s views and opinions, even if that’s not really possible anyway. Hell, he hasn’t even really put it all into art yet, not like he wants to. Sure, there are the pieces he did over the summer, but that’s not nearly enough.

“Anyway”, he says, “what have you been up to? I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.”

It’s not exactly a subtle change of subject, but maybe that’s why it works. Maybe it works because it’s true. They _haven’t_ talked in ages, because Al hasn’t been here.

Rose goes first and tells him about the big exam she’s studying for. Al doesn’t really understand the intricacies—he’s not really into healing magic at all—but he gathers it must be a pretty big deal. From Scorpius face he reads that it’s probably still a while until Rose actually has to take it—she’s always been way too prepared.

“Make sure that you eat and drink”, he offers, old wisdom from Paola and also from taking care of Fawley. Al takes that very seriously, and planning meals is a part of that. Within a year, he’s gotten pretty good at that.

“What?”, Rose asks.

“When you study”, Al supplies, “it’s important to eat well and drink a lot of water, you’ll do better.”

Rose rolls her eyes at him. “Sure, Mum.”

Al meets Scorpius eyes to see what he thinks about the whole thing, but his friend just gives him a weird look. Al shrugs a bit defensively. It’s true. It _is_ important.

“It’s a valid concern”, he says, “you’ve almost killed yourself over exams before.”

There is a small silence as they all think about the disaster that were the OWLs.

In the end it’s Rose that speaks again, her voice a bit thick. “That was different, Al, you know that.”

Scorpius puts his hand on top of hers, a comforting gesture as much as a protective one.

And Al does know. “I’m sorry”, he says, “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“No”, she says, squeezing Scorpius’ hand and Al can see him relax just a tiny bit, “it’s fine. Thank you for worrying.”

And that’s part of it, sure. Al was worried, is even more now, to be perfectly honest. But mostly he was just being thoughtless. Why? Why is he being like this? He knows Rose, and he knows about her struggles. He knows enough not to bring up painful things all the time. Nobody needs that. And now he’s doing it on accident?

Scorpius is still looking at him intensely. Al almost winces.

“Yeah”, he says, “just take care, all right?”

Rose nods. “Sure.”

There’s a small silence. It’s not awkward, exactly—they’ve been friends for too long for that to really happen. Contemplative is probably the better word. That doesn’t make it exactly comfortable, though.

Al considers bringing up meeting Mira the other day, but then decides that he doesn’t actually care about that, it’s just gossip. Then he remembers something else.

“Scorpius, what happened to that proposal you were preparing? You know, about using portkeys more efficiently?”

Scorpius beams. “Well, I finished it and showed it to my boss and you know what she said?” He doesn’t wait for anyone to ask. “First of all, she told me to do the job I was hired for, not make up plans for completely changing the mechanics of the system.”

He says this like it’s good news.

Rose roles her eyes, but Al can see her smile at the same time.

“Then she told me that the changes I was proposing made no sense in combination with how we use other transportation systems—you know, the floo system, the knight bus, flying carpets.”

“I guess that means she read it at least?”, Al says trying to find the silver lining to the situation that must be the only thing about it that Scorpius is seeing, considering how absolutely thrilled he is. Scorpius is all about silver linings. It would be annoying if Al didn’t like him so much.

“So now I’m coming up with a plan for the whole system of transportation!”, Scorpius declares, “and she’s right, it makes so much more sense than just looking only at portkeys.”

Al meets Rose’ eye over the table to communicate to her that her boyfriend is completely bonkers. He knows she agrees at least a little bit, but her eyes are all soft and affectionate. It makes Al’s mind wander again, but he manages to stop himself before he completely loses track of the conversation.

He’s been used to the two of them being extremely soft over each other for years at this point and it has never really bothered him, not even in the very beginning, when it maybe should have been weird—his two best mates suddenly feeling something that Al can’t enter at all—but it’s never been like that. When Al feels separate from them now, it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with him.

Scorpius outlines his plans excitedly and Al does his best to follow him, even though it doesn’t actually matter to him that much—he walks everywhere, anyway—he still wants to know. He knows inside that he’s the kind of person that wants to know what his friends are doing and tries to understand it, too. He wants to be the kind of person, at least. It’s a bit of a revelation, somehow. Al doesn’t know who he wants to be a lot, so he tries to hold onto that.

Besides, it’s not like it’s a completely boring topic, when you think about it. Al’s never considered before that platform nine three quarters could be used way more frequently than the couple of times a year it’s needed for the Hogwarts Express.

They part a couple hours later, and Al feels a bit calmer, a bit more settled in what he’s doing here. Maybe like the universe is a bit more balanced now and some of the things in his life have slotted back into place. Only some, though. He’s still a mess. And he really needs to learn how to deal with it.

* * *

The Spacing Out and Thinking About Her doesn’t stop. At some point, it’s pretty much clear that it won’t stop, and Al just starts planning his day around it. Sort of. Well, he accepts that it’s going to happen. And instead of just pining around senselessly and reminiscing stupid things that were actually more embarrassing and painful than great, he starts thinking about going back. Well, maybe it’s still more daydreaming than planning, but it feels a little bit less dumb.

Ironically, the moment he accepts that his stupid pining isn’t going away is when it actually gets better. That is to say, it doesn’t happen any less. But he’s working around it now. He’s gradually starting to focus on the rest of his life again, and eventually, it starts feeling mostly real again, not as dream-like and disjointed anymore.

Basically, he’s competent enough to master his everyday life again. It’s about time, too, since Cath is gradually starting to get off the high of dating whoever she’s dating and arriving back in the real world. Back in the real world where Al works with her almost every night or evening and where she’s going to be pretty annoyed if he keeps messing up all the time.

That is to say, she’s definitely extremely smitten with whoever that person is. It’s a bit unsettling to be perfectly honest. She keeps changing her shade of lipstick (before that, it’s always been the same red, Al is pretty sure, at least when she’s working, which is the only time he ever sees her) and more often than not she wears her hair down. That on its own, of course, doesn’t actually say anything, but it’s the fact that anything’s changed at all about her outwardly that makes Al think this is something serious.

He’s happy for her.

Then he wonders if he, too, is different _. Maybe lo- maybe finding someone you fancy, uh, seriously fancy, changes you in a visible way_ , he thinks. He wonders if Cath can tell with him the same way he can tell with her—they don’t even know each other that well.

Well, they know each other as well as people that work the night shift together almost daily know each other, which means they stay out of each other’s private business (mostly, if you don’t count the occasional teasing about Al’s supposed status as the _Nightowl_ ’s mystery man), but know how the other takes their coffee and deals with exhaustion and annoying customers. It’s not nothing, but it feels like it shouldn’t be enough to instant-detect life-altering changes.

Al really wonders if she’s noticed. Then he wonders if either Rose or Scorpius have. Neither of them have mentioned anything, certainly, but maybe they’re just being nice about the whole thing. Time and experience have taught all of them to be careful and patient with each other—and even if Al forgets about it from time to time, it’s not likely either of them ever will. Maybe that’s it—maybe they’ve noticed right away and just don’t want him to feel pathetic. The thought of that possibility brings about the exact opposite of the supposed intention.

He’s almost certain that Fawley knows, or that he can guess at least. The thing about Fawley is that it’s basically impossible to keep any secrets from him. It is for Al, at least. Sometimes he thinks the old man can look right into his soul. Or maybe it’s just that they spend multiple hours together everyday.

In any case, Fawley definitely knows. He doesn’t ever bring it up exactly, but it’s in little things he says sometimes—the way he talks about Al’s holiday sometimes or even his art, as if he knows something about its inspiration he couldn’t if he didn’t understand.

Al isn’t sure if he’s grateful for it or not, but at least Fawley is content with knowing without Al having to talk about it.

He doesn’t want to, he really doesn’t. He just wants to keep all of this to himself, as if speaking about it will ruin something about the memory. He isn’t sure what exactly, it doesn’t really make any sense. Al rarely makes sense to himself anymore. Did he ever?

He thinks about Cath again.

 _Maybe,_ he decides, _maybe it’s different for everyone. Maybe some people are more obvious about it than others._

It’s not a very effective consolation, but it’s better than none.

* * *

Eventually, Al treats this problem the same way he treats all of his other problems. He throws them in art and hopes they’ll go away. They don’t, exactly (as they usually don’t), but it still helps.

He tries to work magic in all his pieces now—even if there are no people in them. It’s not really any harder without them, it’s just not very common. At least that is the impression one could get at M.ars, the wizarding art gallery of London.

People everywhere. And wherever there are no people, there are animals. Living things that move, anyway.

That is to say, not in the gallery. There are barely ever any people in the gallery. At this point, Al wonders how it even stays open at all. Maybe it gets government support. It’s a sad reminder of how tiny his field is and how little people care about it.

The unpleasant memory of her prophecy of his alleged future riches (if a hand reading like that can be called a prophecy) enters his mind. He pushes it away. He doesn’t want to be bitter about this now.

Still, there are barely any pictures that don’t have any living beings in them. There are a few abstract paintings, but those are rare. Al’s not sure why.

* * *

Time starts to pass. It seems to go extremely fast and extremely slowly at the same time. Whenever Al thinks about the next summer (everyday) the weeks and months still before him feel endless, but every time he looks back (also everyday), the past weeks seem to have passed in a strange, almost dizzying blur.

Nothing really changes.

Scorpius makes a few advances with his almost idiotically hard (and also so not asked for) effort of planning a renovation of the entire magical transport system. (Al meets him for lunch occasionally and offers some input—not that Al has any clue what he’s talking about, but his friend always seems to appreciate his ideas.)

Rose unsurprisingly passes her exam and promptly starts studying for the next one. (Al tries to show up at her and Scorpius’ place every once in a while to get her out of her hole, but overall, she seems to be taking care.)

Al visits his parents religiously and sends his little sister an owl every month or so. (Lily’s letters are full of speculation about all kinds of magical concepts and Al finds he likes to write about that, even if—yeah, his brain is pretty much a one-trick-pony at this point.)

He works his shifts at the _Nightowl,_ almost all of them with Cath and almost all of them nightshifts, even more so than before. It’s not like he minds.

He paints a few pictures, one of them a winter landscape where the falling snow actually moves. He’s making some progress with his art magic at least—it’s not exactly like a dam that has broken, more like it has a little hole, letting just a tiny bit of water through at a time, slow, but steady. Fawley, at the very least seems pleased.

All in all, nothing changes at all.

* * *

Christmas comes and passes much the same way as last year, with a bit of awkward conversation that makes it abundantly obvious that Al clearly doesn’t have his life together. Al doesn’t know why his family exhausts him that much. It’s not really their fault. It’s not that they are that judgemental, because they really aren’t—but every last one of them, all his uncles and aunts and cousins, are just so damn focused and successful that Al can’t help but feel bad.

Lucy tries to chew information about basically everything out of him again, except this time he feels like he actually has something that he wants to keep from her that’s not a life too boring to satisfy her endless curiosity, but he thinks he manages to avoid the topic of his holiday pretty well. She also brings Carolina again. Scorpius, who Rose brings to Christmas dinner at the Burrow, looks like he might kill the her—not Rose, obviously. Nor Lucy. Probably. It’s still less awkward than last year.

* * *

Shortly after Christmas, Fawley gets sick.

In the end, it’s just a little flu, but when Fawley doesn’t come out of bed and Al has to go look for him in his room instead, he’s shocked by how pale and lifeless his mentor looks. He hurries to the post office and sends an emergency owl to Rose for advice. Then he sets up Fawley’s favourite tea and feels helpless. Fawley tells him not to worry and then promptly starts coughing violently and Al doesn’t feel reassured at all.

It doesn’t take long for Rose to show up. She takes Fawley’s temperature and performs a few diagnostic charms. Al hovers in the corner restlessly.

Eventually she relaxes her tense shoulders and looks back at Al.

“It’s just a little flu.”

She tells him about a few things he can do to make it better, but essentially, it just boils down to rest and waiting.

“Are you _sure_ it’s not that serious?”, Al asks.

Rose nods. “I know I’m only a student healer, but this is pretty basic. He rests and then he’ll be okay. The best you can do is to make him comfortable.”

The thought doesn’t sit well with Al. They’re out in the kitchen now and the way Rose is looking at him makes him feel a bit like he’s the one that’s the patient.

“Why does he look so bad, though?”, he asks, his voice lowered.

Rose sighs. It sounds so weary, that Al has to look up from his nervous fingers into her face. There’s a tired sort of sadness there.

“He’s an old man, Al”, she says, “what do you expect?”

Al doesn’t know what he expects.

He makes her confirm for him again that Fawley will be fine before he lets her go.

In the end, she turns out to be right, and after a week, Fawley is back to his usual self. Still, the incident leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

* * *

The next day at work, Cath’s back to wearing her hair in a ponytail. It’s such a familiar and strange sight at the same time, Al has to look twice.

“Everything okay?”, he asks, resting his hand in her shoulder for a second to get her attention. Then he worries he might be invading her space and pulls it away.

She’s just been so happy, lately, it would just suck if that went away again. It’s strangely important to Al.

He hands her a few things and she mixes a couple of cocktails, their motions practiced and in sync. The _Nightowl_ is rented out for some giant sort of stag party tonight, which means the drinks are twice as fancy and the customers ten times as idiotic. Cath and Al can handle it, though, they’re professionals.

She dishes out the drinks and collects her money before she looks back at him.

“Just tired, I guess. I didn’t really want to work today.”

Al raises his eyebrow, surprised. Cath’s not really the whiny sort—not that she’s whining right now—she has generally a good attitude towards work, even though she pretty much always works the worst shifts (though that’s probably a matter of opinion, seeing as Al actually prefers those), she never loses her cool, even if customers are being assholes or they’ve been working the entire night. He’s never heard her complain before.

She fetches another glass.

“Well, my girlfriend wanted to go out today and I always have to tell her I need to work so that sucks.”, she explains, then almost drops the glass.

Her eyes flicker back to him, a strange apprehension in her gaze.

Al isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say.

“That sucks”, he offers, because it does. “Maybe she could visit you at work, though? I’m sure Monica would let it slip if you chatted for a bit.” He thinks about it for a moment. “Maybe if it’s not too busy.”

Cath smiles a little tiny smile. It looks like it could break more easily than the glass in her hand.

“Yes”, she says, “yeah, maybe. If it’s not too busy.”

Al smiles back, feeling a bit insecure. Is there something else he should be doing?

But then a guy dressed in a fish costume of all things yells for another round of drinks and they both need to get back to work.

They don’t talk cleaning up that day, but it’s not an awkward silence, just filled with mutual exhaustion and understanding. When Cath leaves, she touches his side in a gesture of farewell and they exchange a smile.

* * *

Between everything else in his admittedly somewhat busy everyday life, Al is still trying to learn Italian. He spends some of his salary on a coursebook and repeats the vocabulary in his head when he goes on his walks to literally all the places he ever visits. He’s not exactly sure if that’s how you learn a language, considering he’s never really done it before (not counting the French lessons Aunt Fleur used to give all her nieces and nephews), but he supposes he retains at least a few things.

It’s a good way to calm himself when all he wants to do is get on his broom and leave. It doesn’t always work, but it’s something.

* * *

Winter passes and spring comes. Then spring passes as well. Al paints a few more pictures and gets a bit better, work at the _Nightowl_ stays the same and Scorpius bullies his boss into implementing his magical transportation plan (To be fair, he doesn’t exactly bully her, Al doesn’t think he’s capable of that, instead he just keeps being annoying about it until he gets his will).

By the time summer comes back around, Al basically can’t stand it anymore. He can feel it in his bones, or maybe it’s in the air, the scent of the asphalt warming up and the city aching under the heat. Al knows London summers and he doesn’t want them. (Though it’s not really London itself, but the distinct lack of another place, really.)

Fawley, of course, being the all-knowing teacher he is, knows that as well.

“So when are you going to leave for the summer?”, he asks one day over tea.

Al almost burns his tongue. He was thinking about ways to bring it up, but now it looks like Fawley’s beaten him to it. He didn’t really expect that. Then again, it’s just as well.

So he tells Fawley his date, the same he named to her all those months ago. It’s happening.

He tells Monica next. She doesn’t seem too thrilled about it, but also not particularly surprised. Al’s pretty sure she thinks he has to do some sort of internship for whatever degree she thinks he’s getting. He’s not going to try and contradict her, even though she really couldn’t be further from the truth. They strike the same deal as the last time—Al will take all of his leave and she’ll rehire him next autumn. As far as managers go, he’s pretty lucky with Monica.

His parents take the news with a bit more surprise. Al’s pretty sure they just assumed it would have been a one-time thing, but ultimately, they don’t really say anything about it beyond “Take care.”

Al thinks of Paola’s ugly straw hat. Later, packing, he makes sure it’s on top of all his other stuff in his suitcase.

The last weeks before his trip seem to stretch on and on, even though they are filled with preparations and arrangements for the coming months. In a fit of paranoia remembering Fawley’s sudden flu after Christmas, Al makes Mrs. Marlow promise to check up on him at least once a week. He still feels a bit guilty for just leaving the old man, but consoles himself with the thought that nothing happened when he was gone last summer, except for a few unopened letters.

The day before he leaves is Lily’s graduation at Hogwarts.

Al goes, because of course he goes. It’s not only Lily’s graduation, but also Hugo’s, Rose’ little brother, and Louis’, another Weasley cousin. Basically, it’s almost a family reunion. Well, except for all the other families that are there, too, but Al privately thinks that the combined presence of the Weasleys overpowers pretty much anything else. But he probably only thinks that because it’s his own family.

It’s a great ceremony. McGonagall’s speech is lovely, and so is the Head Boy and Girl’s. Al remembers them dimly from back when he was at Hogwarts himself, but he doesn’t really know them. Obviously, their speech doesn’t hold a candle to Rose and Scorpius’ back at Al’s own graduation (Yes, they were that couple, though at that point, nobody could really begrudge them that).

Still, Al’s heart swells with pride when Lily’s name gets called.

She’s looking so confident walking up there, her long black hair almost managing to look orderly. Almost. She and Al share that unfortunate feature. Still, it doesn’t take away from her aura of optimism and success at all. She shakes Professor McGonagall’s hand almost like an equal, taking the diploma along with her congratulations.

Then she goes to wait for her cousins and her friend Lysander, before all four of them come back to meet them.

To Al’s immense satisfaction, she runs up to him first, pulling him into a tight hug. Her glasses cut into his cheek, hard, but it’s not like he minds.

“I did it, Al, I did it!”

Al lets go of her.

“You sure did.”

She looks so happy, so excited for the future. Al wonders if he looked like that at his graduation. He doubts it. He doesn’t remember feeling it, certainly, he only remembers a certain dread and fear and insecurity. But even that feels incredibly far away now. It’s only been two years, but it feels like forever.

“Congratulations, Lily-Lu!”, James calls out and Al steps aside to let him hug their little sister.

 _It’s nice of him to come,_ Al thinks privately, then rejects the thought. Of course James came. He came for Al’s graduation, after all, why wouldn’t he come for Lily’s?

It’s only that he isn’t around all that much. Right after his own graduation, James took off to America, doing Merlin only knows what for a while. Then, almost a year later, he showed up in a magical American courthouse and won some ridiculous case about magical corporate law. To be perfectly honest, the details fly over Al’s head, but he’s aware that it’s extremely impressive. Since then, James has been doing the same thing at irregular intervals—most of the time it comes completely out of the blue, but as far as Al knows, James has yet to lose a case.

It also means that James only shows up at home sporadically, usually when nobody expects it. Usually whenever would be the most annoying. Despite everything, that hasn’t changed about him at all. Al’s not sure if it’s comfort or not.

A sudden and rather violent poke in his side interrupts his thoughts. “Where are you going with your head, Ally-boy?”

Yeah, no. It’s definitely not a comfort. Only annoyance.

“Somewhere far away from you”, he answers, hoping to sound calm. It’s not exactly true, of course, since he was literally just thinking about James, but his brother doesn’t really need to know that.

“Oh, I betcha”, James says, trying to poke again, but this time, Al’s prepared and can dodge him.

“How’s your old man doing? You still doing charity?”

Al winces. This is what happens when he doesn’t see his brother for a bit of time. He forgets what he’s actually like.

“It’s called a job, James”, he says, forcing his irritation to stay out of his voice. He has learned long ago that the best way to deal with James is to pretend he’s not getting to you at all. If he had any clue about the law at all, Al reckons, he could probably give some valuable tips to James’ opponents. Nobody has more practise arguing with him than Al does.

“It’s only a job when you get payed for it.”, James says.

Al closes his eyes slowly, then opens them again. Wow. James is really going there.

“I do”, Al says, “That’s why it’s a job.”

And he does. He gets payed in knowledge, lodging and art supplies. He’s fine with that. In fact, he doesn’t need or even want anything else. He’s got no reason to feel inferior about that, so he’s not going to let James bully him into that feeling.

James just raises his eyebrows. “Whatever you say, bro.”

Bro? Seriously? Al is so too old for this bullshit.

“Listen, James, if you are just going to-“

“Boys?” Al and James look at the same time. It’s their father, wearing that mixture of concern, disappointment and exasperation on his face like only parents can. “Is there some problem?”

Al immediately feels bad, then feels stupid for feeling bad. He hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s not his fault that James has to brag about his allegedly superior achievements in the most moronic way possible.

He doesn’t say anything, waiting for James to answer, but when he doesn’t say anything either, Aölcaves.

“No, dad.”

“Alright, then”, Harry says, holding both of their gazes before looking away. _Behave, boys,_ is what the gaze is saying, _this is not the place or the time._

Al is intimately familiar with this look, and even now, at twenty years old, it’s extremely effective. It’s more surprising that this time, it seems to be just as effective for James, because he doesn’t say anything else for at least five minutes.

Al chats a bit with Lily’s friend Lysander, who plans on going with his mother on one of her exploration trips this summer and seems very excited about it. Lysander’s a nice kid, and Al knows that he’s extremely smart as well, but he can’t make himself focus on the conversation properly. The excitement about Lily’s achievements and the subsequent dealing with James distracted him for a moment, but now, his mind is back on his trip tomorrow.

He pulls out his pocket watch. They’ve just been standing around here socialising for quite a bit now. He wonders how much longer this whole thing will take. As soon as the thought enters his head, he feels guilty about it, but at the same time he can’t help it.

He might have a slight problem.

His eyes glide over the rest of his family. Lysander’s gone off to talk to Rose and Hugo, while Lily is in animated conversation with Professor McDonald, the teacher for Muggle Studies. Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur are talking to Al’s and Rose’ parents. Their son Louis, who also graduated today, is standing somewhere off to the side talking to—oh, Lucy.

Al forgot that she’d be here today, too. It only makes sense, though—she’s the youngest of all of them, so of course she’s here. She’s still a student, after all. Next year, Al realises, she’s going to be the only Weasley in Hogwarts. And once she’s gone, there won’t be any until one of his cousins has children who are old enough. It’s a bit of a strange thought. There are so many of them, it’s easy to forget they’re not simply part of the furniture in Hogwarts.

Funny that he thinks like that, even though he’s literally part of that family.

He’s just finished that thought when Lucy comes up to him, Louis in tow.

She gives him a hug before he can even say anything, but she pulls back quickly.

“Hi Al! Sure haven’t heard from you in a while!”

Al mentally braces himself. “I’m sure Rose updated you on my continued survival.”, he replies and almost to his surprise, Lucy laughs.

“She did.”, Lucy says once she’s finished laughing. It sounds oddly serious.

Al blinks and looks at her properly. He’s not all that used to Lucy being serious. He’s used to her wanting to be taken seriously, to be somewhere on the sidelines getting into his and Rose’ (and Scorpius’, by extension) business, by making her jokes and asking a lot of questions. Then again, he literally hasn’t seen her since Christmas, and they haven’t really talked all that much then.

Unexpectedly, he feels a pang of guilt. He’s pretty much avoided Lucy ever since he graduated Hogwarts. It’s not even that he doesn’t like her—obviously he loves her, she’s family, but loving doesn’t someone doesn’t always include liking them—still, he does like her. He’s fond of her, even protective. Well, he used to be anyway. It’s hard to be protective of someone you never see.

He looks her up and down. She’s taller than he remembered, wearing make-up, but it’s more subtle than he remembers from when she first started experimenting with it, back forever ago. Her red hair is a bit shorter and she’s wearing it back in a high ponytail, a few strands out in front, clashing with the red of her tie. She’s not really like how he always viewed her anymore—a little girl that wants in on the bigger people’s business.

But maybe now she’s a bigger person herself. Al certainly wouldn’t know. And he thinks about how she keeps bringing Carolina for Christmas, even though she must know how everyone else feels about that.

She’s frowning now. “Hey, Al, are you still there?” She’s gesturing with her hand.

Al blinks. “Sorry, I was spacing out.” He shakes the thought out of his head. “How are you doing?”

She seems almost taken aback by the question, then she smiles. “I’m fine. I’m really proud of Louis and Hugo and Lily.”

That’s not what Al meant, but he supposes it makes sense in a way. That’s what they’re here for, after all.

“How’s Carolina?”, he asks, and he sees Louis’ head jerk up. Al can’t blame her, he’s almost surprising himself here.

Lucy’s smile breaks for a moment. “She’s okay, I think. As okay as she ever is, anyway.” She’s smiling again, but she looks terribly sad. “She didn’t want to come though. She said it would just make everyone uncomfortable.” She crunches her nose. “Lily doesn’t like her much.”

Al smiles back, feeling a bit helpless. “Lily does hold grudges.”

Lucy looks him directly in the eye. That’s something that hasn’t changed—she’s always been a bit too comfortable with eye contact. “And you don’t?”

Al shrugs. He doesn’t really know. In all honesty, it doesn’t feel like it’s his place to judge. “Rose doesn’t.”, he says simply.

Now Lucy sighs, too, dropping her gaze for a moment. “I guess she doesn’t”, she says flickering back up to his eyes, “but she also still talks to me.”

Al winces. “Listen, I’m so-“

“Don’t say you’re sorry.”, Lucy says, “it doesn’t look good on you.”

Al winces again, harder.

“Stop it, Luce”, Louis says, pushing a hand on her shoulder. Al almost forget he was still there. Now, he feels even worse. It’s Louis’ day, too, and now he’s ruining it with his stupidity.

Lucy sighs, looking wearier than Al could ever imagine seeing her before. “I wasn’t going to bring it up…” She doesn’t finish the thought. Al isn’t even sure if she’s talking to him.

Louis pushes her away and back to the others.

Al blinks again, hard, until the tears in his eyes disappear.

He pulls out his watch again to look.

Then, he calls his broom and leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the story so far and I'm excited to hear your thoughts!


	7. you push it aside (yeah, that's how it goes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al represses his feelings even harder. At least until he can't anymore.

Al arrives at Paola’s inn in the middle of the night. He’s been flying non-stop since he left Hogwarts, except for picking up his luggage.

He knows he shouldn’t pull stuff like that—it’s stupid, and even more than that, it’s dangerous and irresponsible, but the intense desire to just be gone in combination with the other very intense desire to be in a very specific place is enough for him to disregard caution.

He really just wants to get away.

And he’s wanted to see her again for what feels like forever.

It’s not that he doesn’t feel guilty—it’s that he already does, and piling more guilt on top of that doesn’t really make all that much of a difference anymore, and the wind in his hair blows the guilt away into all directions until it doesn’t exist anymore, until nothing exists anymore except Italy and being a stranger and maybe being in lo—yeah, something like that.

Those are the things that Al allows to stay. Those are the things that he takes along with him into Paola’s kitchen.

It’s late. Paola probably isn’t even up anymore. Maybe he should just sleep in the street. He would be safe, he can use magic to protect him from any danger.

All danger, except maybe sunstrokes. Al has to smile. He never did learn how to brew that potion. Maybe he’ll ask Felina when he finds her. Maybe he’ll just stick with the straw hat. He kind of likes it, even though it’s the ugliest item of clothing he’s ever owned.

He ends up knocking anyway. Maybe it’s that he just wants to sleep in a real bed, maybe it’s something else that he doesn’t care to examine right now, but he knocks. He really doesn’t want to examine it. And he’s exhausted, too.

He’s right, Paola must have gone to bed already, because there’s no reaction right away. He tries again. Then again.

For a minute he just stands there. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do now. It’s not like he can break in. Well, he could, probably, but—yeah no.

It’s the first time he stopped in his tracks between Hogwarts and here. It’s uncomfortable.

 _Nothing except here,_ he reminds himself. For now, there’s nothing except what’s right here.

He repeats the thought in his head until it’s true. Tries to, anyway. He’s not sure how well it works, but for now it doesn’t matter, because-

“Al!”

She doesn’t sound annoyed, mostly surprised. Maybe even happy to see him, Al isn’t sure. As happy as Paola ever gets with him. Exasperated fondness is probably the highest point on that scale.

At this point, Al didn’t even expect the door to open really. Stupid of him not to account that she would need some time to get out of bed in order to open the door. Then on the other hand, he didn’t think she would even hear him knocking at all.

Well, obviously, she did.

“You trouble”, she says, and it isn’t quite clear if she’s asking him if he is in any or simply telling him he is.

Al assumes that the second is a given anyway and decides to respond to the first. “I’m just visiting.”

She sighs and gives him a look. Then she yawns. Al has to yawn as well. Lily once told him that you did that because—

_Nothing except here._

“Come inside, boy”, Paola says and ushers him inside.

“Grazie!”, Al replies, remembering the very beginning of his self-taught Italian. For that, he gets a small smile.

“I have a room. But you need to change the bed.”

Al nods. “Thank you.” He’s not quite sure what that means, but he’ll take it either way.

She shows him to one of the rooms, then turns to leave, probably go back to bed herself. “Good night.” She pauses for a moment. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Uh, yeah.”, Al agrees, “Good night. And thanks again.”

She nods and goes.

As it turns out, by “changing the bed” she merely meant he had to put clean sheets on the bed, which Al can definitely manage, even by hand. But he’s exhausted, and alone and it’s the middle of the night and it’s dark and there is nobody around anyway, so he just pulls out his wand and does it with magic. Way faster.

The joys of being a wizard. Yay.

Al doesn’t feel very joyful.

And even though his limps are so heavy he can barely lift them at all and even the thought of opening his eyes causes him pain, he struggles to fall asleep that night.

* * *

Paola wakes him for breakfast, but as always in the morning, she’s too busy to hold a proper conversation. Al figured it must be early in the season, but he’s obviously wrong, as everything seems even busier than he remembers. Not that he minds, exactly. Good business is good news, after all.

And just like that, he’s left to solitude and art. And finding Felina, obviously.

It’s what he sets out to do first. He thinks he might have tried last night if he weren’t sure that she wouldn’t be awake anyway. But now, she must be out and about.

If she’s here at all. But he’s not going to consider that for now. She said she would be here. Well, she didn’t really say it, but it was heavily implied. It was. Al decides to quench that train of thought.

He starts walking around, visiting all of her usual places to work, or at least the places she used to work last year. Finding his way around town comes easy to him now, no walking in circles, no confused stops in sudden cul-de-sacs. It’s a stark contrast to how it used to be. Al’s not sure when the change happened. He can’t remember knowing where he was going here at all, not even at the very end of the summer, even though surely, he must have. He must have, if he knows it now. It’s funny how memories work, twisting tiny details like that. 

Finding all of the spots still takes him a while. He has covered maybe only half of them by the time noon rolls around. No luck yet.

When she still isn’t at the next spot, he forces himself to take a break. He doesn’t really want to, but his head is starting to hurt, and he isn’t sure if it’s just due to the lack of sleep or if he’s in danger of another sunstroke. It really is something he would like to avoid for the sheer pain of it, but also because it would be pretty humiliating if he managed to pull that _again._

He decides he should probably eat something.

He doesn’t take a lot of time for it, but he still feels a bit better afterwards.

It takes him the rest of the day to walk all over the place, and with every spot he ticks of his mental list, his heart sinks a little. The sun is already going down when he checks the last one, right across the street from the little wall they always used to sit on.

Nothing.

Al blinks. Then he blinks a little harder.

_This isn’t—it can’t—it doesn’t—_

He thought for sure she’d be here. She said she would. Well, she didn’t say, but—yeah, she didn’t say. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even tell him her name.

He blinks again and this time he feels the wetness on his eyelashes.

_Oh._

He’s crying, isn’t he?

He thought for sure she’d be here, but she didn’t come. And really, it’s all he’s been thinking about all year, even if he didn’t want to, it was a real problem. Even if he pretended it wasn’t. He just pretended it was all fine. Like it is a way to live—just sleepwalking through everything waiting for summer. But clearly it isn’t—it isn’t because he just keeps messing everything up, with Lucy, with the rest of his family he barely ever talks to, the way he hasn’t done anything at all in the past two years except babysitting an old man and catering to the needs of drunk people.

He presses his eyes together, trying to keep the tears in like it will keep the emotions in, but it doesn’t and maybe that’s why he doesn’t see, why he doesn’t hear, at first…

“Al. Al!”

Then there’s a voice and a hand on his arm and he’s half turning around, half being turned around and yeah, she’s hugging him and he’s hugging back—

“You’re here.”, Al says against her hair. She’s just short enough that it ends up basically in his mouth. His voice sounds strange to his own ears, weirdly detached. It simply can’t hold all the emotions he’s feeling. Frankly, Al himself can’t hold all the emotions he’s feeling, he isn’t even sure if he can feel them at all, it’s just so much.

“Of course”, she says like there was never any doubt to it at all. Maybe there wasn’t. It makes Al’s heart swell in a strange way and pushes away some of the things he was thinking and feeling earlier.

She lets go of him and looks into his eyes.

“You are here”, she says, turning his earlier statement back to him.

Al doesn’t know what to say to that. “I am.”

She crunches her eyebrows together and for an absurd heartbeat, Al thinks he has something on his face. Then she says: “Are you crying, Al?”

Al raises his hand up to his face and touches a bit of wetness, just there underneath the eye. He drops it again, slowly.

“Are you—” She pauses. “Did something happen?”

Al shakes his head. “No.” His voice sounds husky, still a bit foreign. “I mean, kind of, but it doesn’t matter now.”

_It doesn’t._

She takes a step away and suddenly it’s all very awkward. “If you’re sure.”

Al just nods.

There is a small pause where they’re just staring at each other.

“I’m sorry”, Al says, and his voice is maybe just a tiny bit too fast, “I just thought maybe you wouldn’t show up at all.”

“Oh.”, she says simply.

There’s another pause, shorter this time.

“Oh”, she says again, as if the first one didn’t hold the meaning like she intended it to, “Why would you—” She shakes her head as if to clear it. “I am here.”

“Yes”, Al confirms, “me too.”

At this, she smiles a little. “Yeah, you too.”

And Al has to smile as well.

They don’t talk all that much that night, mostly just exchange badly disguised stares of wonder and surprise and a sudden shyness that wasn’t there before, but Al isn’t that bothered by it. They have a lot of time. Besides, he kind of likes it. It’s proof that there actually is something between them, that this isn’t a lucky chance encounter. It is proof that this _matters_. And it does matter.

In the end, they mostly just make plans to meet up at the wall the next day.

Like the rest of it, this is also slightly awkward, mostly because they never thought to make specific plans ever before. They just sort of ran into each other more or less intentionally. But now, it’s a plan. It’s an established thing.

Al sleeps better that night.

* * *

When he wakes up in the morning, he can’t wait for the meeting time to come.

Maybe Felina can’t either, because when he shows up, she’s already there even though Al is early himself.

“Hi.”, Al says and plops down on the wall next to her.

“Hi.”, she says back.

They’re not quite looking at each other.

“So”, she says, sounding as if she wants to start something, but she doesn’t really continue.

“So?”, Al asks after a bit.

She shifts a bit closer. “How’s England?”

Al shrugs to disguise his wince. He doesn’t want to talk about England. Talking about England means talking about home and home means about a million other things he doesn’t want to talk about. Or even think about, really.

_Nothing except here, nothing except here._

“Fine”, he says eventually, “England’s—it’s fine.”

A pause.

“How’s Italy?”

He can see her smiling a little out of the corner of his eye.

“You can tell me”, she says, “You are here.”

“Yeah”, Al says, “yeah, I am.”

“Do you-“ They both start and stop speaking at the same pause.

“You go first”, Al says quickly.

“No, you can go—"

“No, really—”

In the end, Felina’s the one to talk first.

She’s shifting around on the wall again, clearly nervous.

“Do you—I mean, are you still, uh, do you still want to kiss me?”

She says the last seven words very quickly, so quickly that Al almost doesn’t catch her meaning.

He blinks, his brain needing a moment to process.

She misinterprets his silence and starts to scurry away.

“No, wait”, he says the moment he notices, “I—of course I do.”

“You do?”

He nods.

And they do. Kiss.

It’s a little bit awkward, a little bit stilted, a little bit uncomfortable, but really, it’ss perfect.

“I just thought”, she says, catching her breath, “a lot can happen in a year.”

“Maybe”, Al replies, even though he feels like he’s done nothing at all in that past year, “but not that much.”

And just like that, not much has happened at all.

* * *

The summer passes in a quiet kind of bliss. Al and Felina meet up everyday, usually just to work next to each other, to exist next to each other, her fortune-telling for tourists, him drawing and painting. It’s a comfortable thing to have the work between each other, the focus. Al thinks it might be one of the things he likes about her best.

Other days, they just talk—about magic and stars and philosophy even. Not really about home though, not about family or other people. She alludes to it a few times, but Al doesn’t really respond to it—he doesn’t want to talk about his family right now, no, he can’t talk about his family right now. She gets the hint pretty quickly and doesn’t make much of a fuss about it. Another quality Al can appreciate.

In turn he doesn’t ask her about the things she doesn’t want to talk about and there seems to be quite a lot of it. An obvious (and to be honest, a quite weird) one is her name. Al, a little bit surprised at himself, finds that he’s actually pretty cool with that. In the end, it doesn’t really matter all that much. He just calls her Felina and she’s fine with it.

So really, not much has changed from last summer—Al paints, she tells the future to people and they talk about magic. But there is a comfort there, a certainty that wasn’t there before. It’s so small, hard to pinpoint almost, but it still makes all the difference.

One memorable day, Felina takes him to plant a small garden of magical herbs on the outskirts of town. He’s not sure where it came from, if it belongs to her or if she just charmed a small spot so nobody will notice it, but she certainly seems excited to plant some herbs on it.

Al, to be quite honest, doesn’t really get the appeal. Neville, or rather Professor Longbottom, hasn’t managed to convince him of the joys of herbology, and honestly, he doubts it’ll ever happen. He’s made his peace with that. He’s just no gardener.

Felina, however, apparently has not. She is positively delighted at the idea and isn’t about to be put off by Al’s lack of enthusiam. Or something.

“Why do you want to do this so much?”, Al asks, while dragging around a huge bag of gardening soil. He’s not actually sure if you’re supposed to use that. He can’t remember it from Herbology class, but then again, he isn’t about to pretend he knows better because he really doesn’t.

“Why do you want to not do this so much?”, Felina counters.

Al puts the bag down and shrugs. Urgh, he feels so sweaty. It’s way too hot here. “Plants just die when I come close.”

Felina raises an eyebrow and Al can tell that she doesn’t believe him. Well, she’s in for a surprise.

“So why do you?”, he asks again, “Want to do this, I mean?”

She just shrugs. “It’s just such a witchy thing to do, isn’t it?”

Al tilts his head. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to him.

“You know, planting a garden full of magic herbs and so on?”

“I don’t really see it.”, Al says, which earns him a shove. Not a terribly hard one, though.

As predicted, he’s pretty much useless at the whole gardening business, but somehow, he still ends up painting complicated configurations of leaves and dirt for a few weeks.

Thankfully, they also dabble in Al’s preferred kind of magic—anything that involves a wand. He can’t believe that Felina does it so little—it seems like such a natural and basic thing to him, he has no idea how he would even live without it at all.

It’s not really that Felina lives without it, exactly, she does have a wand—she just doesn’t really use it a terrible lot, which Al also finds startling. Maybe not as startling as he did a year ago—he _has_ learned a few things about what magic really means by now and that it doesn’t always involve sparkles and colourful beams of light, but still—waving around a wand and saying a magic word just feels like the essence of the whole thing, clearer and simpler than everything else. Not necessarily easier, though.

“Less fun!”, Felina insists.

“Incredibly versatile and useful?”, Al counters.

“Only if you know like a million spells.”, she says, looking him in the eyes triumphantly, as if it’s the ultimate counter-argument.

Al meets her gaze head-on.

“Oh no, you do, don’t you?” She’s been starting to say things like that, putting those little questions at the end of sentences like Al does. Her English, even though it’s always been great, is improving. Al wishes his Italian would improve at the same rate. It doesn’t, even though he’s gotten a lot better since he came.

“Of course you do!”, she groans.

“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?” It’s not really an insult, per se, but it still somehow feels a little like one.

She laughs and it feels a little like she’s cutting his chest open, letting the sound right into his heart, raw and a bit vulnerable. Al has to look away for a moment.

“It’s not really”, she says, “It’s just so typical.”

“Normal is what it is”, Al grumbles, “What is the point of a wand if you don’t know a million ways to use it?”

“Exactly!”, Felina says, “What is the point?”

Al stares at her. “Are you making fun of me?”

She laughs again and this time, Al doesn’t avert his gaze and suddenly he doesn’t even understand why he ever wanted to. It’s just—how can anyone look away at all?

She doesn’t notice him staring and mocks him some more instead.

Later, he still shows her some charms she doesn’t know, and she listens carefully to his instructions.

* * *

The summer is quiet and steady and so free of any troubles and spikes it almost feels like a dream again, but this time, like a good one, maybe a sunny afternoon nap, comfortable and cozy.

Al doesn’t want to wake up. He really doesn’t. And more than anything, he doesn’t want to be left with nothing to remember his dream by.

But he can’t ask for the thing he really wants to do, he just can’t. This has been a taboo from the very beginning and no matter how much Al wants it, it’s just not right.

It’s the second to last week of August when he finally breaks. Well, to be quite fair, it’s not really him who breaks. Sort of. It’s mostly him, but it’s not really his fault. Well, it is. But he doesn’t start it. In fact, he tried really hard not to start it.

That day, Al’s down in the street painting, Felina on the other side. She has her crystal bowl out today and business seems to be going well. By now, she even has a few regulars.

Al knows this because even though he’s supposedly painting, he doesn’t really have any evidence on his canvas to support that. Really, he’s just been staring at her all day.

It’s cheesy, but he can’t help himself. She’s just so mesmerizing when she works, looking all mysterious and knowledgeable at the same time. He considers Carol back from the _Nightowl,_ who used to think of Al as mysterious. He really wonders what she would think of Felina who is ten times as mysterious as Al could ever be. Then he remembers that he’s not thinking about the _Nightowl,_ because the _Nightowl_ means home and home doesn’t exist to him right now.

_Nothing except here._

He abandons the thought and just goes back to staring.

Several times, he tries to pick up his brush in order to actually do something, but every time he does, he can’t think of anything to say except, well. It’s a bit frustrating.

In the end, it’s a bit of a wasted day. Not that it matters, really, it’s not like Al’s here to achieve anything, but still. The anxiety of trying to do things and not being able to burns under his skin.

He’s not very good at concealing it.

“What’s the matter?”, Felina asks when he helps her to pack up.

Al shrugs. He doesn’t want to bring it up, not when he shouldn’t be thinking about it in the first place.

“You know, the usual.” He isn’t sure what he means by that, but it certainly isn’t wrong. Everyone more or less always circles through the same cycle of personal issues, don’t they?

She doesn’t say anything more than that, but later, when they’re sitting side by side, not quite ready to go to sleep yet, she brings it up again.

“Seriously, are you okay? I can feel the bees under your skin!”

“Excuse me?”, Al says, bewildered, “What does that even mean?”

“You are making me—” She pauses for a moment, searching for the right word. “—anxious.”

“I’m sorry”, Al says, immediately feeling bad.

“Is it about leaving again? Do you need to go home soon?”

Al sighs and tugs on a lock of her hair. She doesn’t pull away. “Yeah, but not for another week.”

She sighs, too, and Al can feel the sound go through her body. It’s sad and he doesn’t want to think about it, but there’s something about that sigh, that makes him feel less alone about it.

“I know usually we don’t—” Al doesn’t find out what they don’t usually because she doesn’t finish the sentence. “Just tell me, okay?”

Al swallows. She already knows, doesn’t she? That’s the conversation they’re having here, isn’t it?

He takes a deep breath to brace himself for the conversation. She stiffens next to him.

“Just—I know I shouldn’t, because that’s literally the first thing we ever talked about, but I keep thinking about—”

“Al”, she cuts him off and Al’s already waiting for the impact of his stupid head and stupid hands always wanting too much. “I can’t understand you if you talk so fast.”

_Oh._

“I’m sorry”, Al says quickly, then repeats it, slower. “I’m sorry.”

He takes another breath and starts again, this time making sure to keep his words calm and steady.

“I know that you don’t want it”, he starts, “but I just keep thinking about wanting to draw you. Or paint you. I never did it again after that first time, of course, and I won’t do it, but that’s what I was thinking about, I’m sorry, I can’t—” He stops himself before he starts rambling again. “It’s just what I do with my feelings usually”, he says, more quietly, “put them into art.”

There’s a little pause.

“Oh.”, she says.

“Oh?”, Al asks. _So is she going to freak out now? Or is she already freaking out on the inside?_ Al knows freaking out on the inside. You can’t always tell just by looking at someone.

“No, I just—“ She makes an odd sound and it takes Al a moment to figure out that she’s giggling. She’s not exactly a giggler, usually. “I almost forgot about that.”

Al doesn’t really know what to say. “Well, I definitely didn’t.”

“Look”, she says and nudges him over to a streetlight. Al feels uncomfortably reminded of when she read his palm and wonders if she’s going to try again—he’s honestly not keen on that. But instead of taking his hand, she shoves hers into her pocket, clearly looking for something.

She pulls out a folded piece of paper, no, two of them, and folds them up in the light of the streetlight. They look old and worn, like they’ve been folded and unfolded times and times again.

It’s not until she’s properly unfolded the first that Al gets what he’s looking at. The faint pencil strokes of long-replaced sunshades, abandoned in lieu of an entirely different motive…

“You kept them.”, he says, his voice sounding strangely small.

“Of course”, she says, “You thought I did not?”

She seems genuinely surprised.

“I figured you’d want to get rid of them as soon as possible.”, Al answers. It’s what he’d always assumed—that she’d burned them, or something, right away. And nothing else had ever lead him to believe differently, considering how she acted when ever one of her clients tried to take a picture of her.

“No, of course not”, she says, “They are incredible. They are beautiful and they are magic. Maybe it would have been smarter to throw them away, but I couldn’t do that.”

“Oh.”, Al says again. He hadn’t realised she thought like that. Hadn’t even considered it, really. “Well, I’m glad you like them?”, he offers, but it sounds more like a question than anything else.

“I do.” A small pause. “I just don’t want them to be out there somewhere where people could see.”

“I see.”, Al says. He’s not sure if he does, not sure if he gets it in the way he should, but he certainly understands it better than before.

She takes his hand and squeezes it. Al moves a bit closer to her again.

It’s quiet between them for a while, so long that Al thinks that conversation is over.

“Why do you want to draw me so much?”, she asks eventually, her voice quiet, but sudden and determined enough it almost makes Al jump.

He doesn’t, though, and considers the question for a moment. “Well”, he says, “I already said it’s because I like to put my feelings into art” He feels his cheeks heat at that. When he says it like that it sounds so sappy. She doesn’t seem to mind, though, just squeezes his hand again. It gives Al courage to keep talking. “and I guess it’s also because I want something to remember you by? When I’m home, so I can look at it.”

Now his cheeks are burning even more.

Felina’s still not moving away.

“I see”, she says, and Al wonders if she really does and doesn’t just say it the same way he says it sometimes, when he really doesn’t see at all.

“I see”, Al replies and realises he’s doing it again. Also, it doesn’t particularly make any sense.

“Okay”, she says suddenly and with such a conviction that Al startles.

“What?”

“Okay, you can draw me. Or paint me. Whatever.”

“Really?” The excitement rushes through his veins so fast, Al has to forcibly shove it down. “I mean, really?”

She shrugs, like it’s not a big deal, but it is. He can still see it there in her posture. “Just don’t go around showing people.”

* * *

It turns out to be a bit of an awkward affair.

Al takes about a million years to decide on a medium—at first he wants to go for oil paint on a canvas, but then he figures that would be a bit excessive, especially if nobody else is supposed to see it. Besides, oil paintings take a long time to be really good and he’s not sure if he has that. He certainly doesn’t want to rush it and make it bad.

He thinks about watercolours for a solid ten minutes before he realises that they are terrible and he hates them, so they’re out, too.

In the end, he settles on pencil and paper. A bit basic, maybe, but he likes to go back to his roots.

(Wouldn’t that be ink, though? Terrible ink doodles on parchment of all things? Al decides not to think on it too hard. Pencil and paper it is.)

Then there is the matter of drawing itself.

“Where do you want me to, uh, sit?”, Felina asks.

Al scrunches his nose, looking at his pencils. He needs a new sharpener; this one is crap.

“I guess I can also stand?”, she offers.

Al looks up. She looks like she’s mildly uncomfortable, her cheeks the tiniest bit red. _Cute_ , Al thinks and gets occupied with staring for a moment before he thinks to answer.

“No, sit down, it’s gonna be uncomfortable otherwise.”

She gives him a look that conveys something like suffering.

“Maybe right here?”, Al suggests and points at a stretch of the wall. It doesn’t actually matter all that much. It’s not like he’s really interested in the background.

So she sits down, and he sits down, not quite opposite from her, and pulls out his sketchbook, the one you can rip the pages out of.

It’s a bit simple, maybe, but Al has decided on simple, so he’s going to go with it. Nice and simple. Also, he’s a bit scared that if he does something more complicated, she might freak out and change her mind. He doesn’t want her to change her mind.

He looks up from the sketchbook at her and then right back again. Usually, he can stare at her for days, it’s embarrassing, really, but right now, it’s just too weird. Sure, he’s supposed to look at her now, so he can draw her, but it’s just plain uncomfortable when she’s waiting for it.

He tries again, because really, he’s being ridiculous, but he just can’t seem to do it properly. Maybe it’s because he’s never done it like this before, with someone deliberately posing for him—Fawley does it from time to time, with the middle-aged men in midlife-crises, who think it’s fancier than just using a photo like a normal person. (Well, sometimes using a real model is better than a picture, especially for the magic, but still—Fawley doesn’t make those move, anyway.)

“Should I do anything?”, she asks, and Al considers that maybe even standing up couldn’t make this any more uncomfortable.

“Forget it”, he says, making a quick decision, “this isn’t working.”

She blinks at him. “So you don’t want to do it after all?”

“No, yes, I do, just—not like this.”

She sits up straighter, a shade of doubt in her eyes. “Do you want to use watercolours after all?”

“No, not watercolours”, Al says, “but we need to make this less—less weird.”

At this, she seems to relax a little, almost laugh. “So it is weird? You think so, too?”

Al smiles at her, feeling a mixture of fondness and awkwardness. That’s properly a good description of all their interaction. Both deliciously sweet and horrendously awkward. Al wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Yeah, this is pretty much the definition of awkward.”

They both laugh and it’s already a bit better.

“So what do we do now?”, she asks when they sober up a little.

Al considers this. “I’m not sure—maybe it would be better if you would be doing something, you know, a little less weird.”

“That makes sense.”, she says, looking obviously relieved.

Al feels a bit bad.

“But what should I do?”, she asks, “just anything?”

“It doesn’t really matter I think”, Al says, “just anything you could do for a really long time without getting bored, I suppose.”

“So I can forget you are there, watching my every move?”

Al snorts, feeling a bit offended. “You make me sound like a stalker or something.”

She sticks out her tongue at him. “Or something.”

Al plans his attack carefully. “You are so—mean!” With that last word, he pokes his finger between her rips.

“Stop!”, she yells, laughing.

“Just taking my revenge.”

“Sure.”

They fall quiet again.

“So can I read the cards?”, she asks, eventually, and Al almost doesn’t catch her meaning. Oh, right, the cards. Reading the future in the cards. The thing she does.

“You mean while I draw you? Sure.”

“Yeah.” She counts her fingers with her other hand. “But I meant your cards.”

Al blinks and stops himself from squirming. “You mean my future?”

She nods, looking at him expectantly. When he doesn’t say anything she adds: “You can draw me, and I can read your cards.”

It sounds like a fair exchange, but the thought still doesn’t sit well with him. They haven’t talked about it, but Al knows that she is still convinced her palm reading last year was accurate, and however much Al believes that she probably really can tell the future, he can’t make himself believe _that_. And he doesn’t want to hear her try and convince him again. It’s just not—it’s just not productive.

“Won’t that be over way too fast?”, he asks. “This can take a while you know.”

“I have seen you draw things before”, she replies, “I know. But when I do it properly, I can do it for hours.”

“Seriously?”

“There are many different ways to lay out cards.”

Al doesn’t really doubt that. His eyes must deceive his thoughts, because the next thing she says is: “Come on! I won’t tell you if you don’t want to know.”

“Why do you want to know?”

She shrugs. “I am curious.”

It’s not a real answer, but it still is probably correct. What other reason is there to want to know the future except curiosity? Al can’t really think of any. Then again, he doesn’t really want to know the future. Actually, he really _doesn’t_ want to know the future.

But on the other hand, he can’t really say no to that. He’s long since understood that telling the future for Felina is like making art for him. Not really a choice at all, but something that is inside them and needs to get out every once in a while. And when she allows him to draw her, which clearly goes against her principles, it’s only fair if she gets to tell his future.

“Do you promise not to tell?”

“Sure”, she says casually, but by now Al knows her well enough to tell that she’s excited.

“Okay then.”

And just like that, she pulls out a deck of cards out of her purse.

For a moment, Al asks himself if she planned this specifically, or if she just carries them around all the time. He decides it’s probably the latter, at the very least considering the state of the packaging. The cards themselves look worn and old as well, but Al can’t help but notice they’re beautiful. Artwork, really. Al wonders if it matters that they’re beautiful or if any cards could do the job. Not that he knows anything about divination.

“Do I need to do anything?”, he asks as she starts to shuffle the cards. “You know, so you know it’s my future you’re telling?”

She regards the cards carefully. “For now, just say stop when you feel it.”

 _Feel what?_ , Al wants to ask, but doesn’t. He decides on a random moment to say it. That will just have to do it. 

After that, they both get to work. It’s still awkward at first, but after a while they both get lost in what they are doing and Al relaxes a little. They don’t talk, except for the occasional time when Felina asks him to pick a card or say a number. And as he makes stroke after stroke with his pencil, he feels like this is what it’s supposed to be like always.

* * *

Leaving again is a quiet affair. It’s not the same as last time, there’s no cloud, no confusion as to what is happening. Everything is much clearer, almost as if the colours are just filling in. It also hurts a lot more.

“I can’t believe you have a flying broom.”, Felina says. Al thinks at this point they’re both just trying to delay the inevitable. It’s good to know that, though, that she has to try, too.

“I can’t believe you _don’t_ have one”, he counters.

She laughs and Al lets the sound seep into his heart and tries to commit it to memory as clear and hard as possible. He’s not sure if he’s doing a good job at it.

“I can’t believe that either.”, she says.

Al shrugs. “Maybe someday.”.

An expression crosses her face, so quick that Al can’t identify it.

“Maybe”, she says very quietly.

Al opens his arms and for a terrifying moment he thinks she won’t come, won’t let him have this. But she comes to hug him without hesitation.

“Can I…?”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, but she just nods and raises her chin up to him. Their lips meet, just once, just so short and sweet it almost didn’t happen at all.

But that’s it, isn’t it.

“Well”, Al says, dropping his arms. _That’s it, isn’t it?_ But he doesn’t say that.

She smiles the same way she always does—not entirely happily.

“See you around, then”, she says.

Al nods. “Yeah. See you around.”

He smiles back before he charms himself for the journey so she can’t see him anymore. Then, he gets on his broom and leaves again.

* * *

Leaving again is a quiet affair and it’s not the same as the last time at all.

Al knows the route by now, knows what the best way to fly is and where he has to take care, it doesn’t take a lot of brain power anymore. But it is still a long way to go all at once and that means Al has a lot of time to think.

It’s funny because he doesn’t remember it being that long. He doesn’t remember it being that long and tiring and lonely and terrible, except yes, he does, he absolutely remembers it that way, because he wanted it that way.

Long and lonely and tiring and terrible. He’s chasing that, has been ever since he graduated Hogwarts and he doesn’t know why, has never even thought about why, can’t explain it to himself at all, but he knows it’s true.

_And what now?_

_Now he’s started catching up to it._

He blinks against the wind, then a bit harder.

The images come back up again, Lucy and her pony, “I wasn’t going to bring it up”, quiet and not even directed at him, but that’s only the most recent thing, isn’t it? Rose’ face in a pub, “That was different, Al” and Scorpius staring at him from across the table, his father on the stairs in Al’s childhood home with concerned eyes and Al had moved out instead of talking. He doesn’t talk at all anymore, does he? He used to be so good, so good at talking and now he’s just tired and in a cloud all the time, even before Felina he was and now it’s lifting just a tiny bit and it hurts so much and he has no clue what to do.

He blinks again and this time, he can feel the wetness between his lashes.

 _Oh,_ he thinks, he’s crying, isn’t he? But this conversation happens on a very remote island in his brain, isolated from the rest of the thoughts and emotions that have started to storm it.

His friends’ and family’s faces seem to be flashing in front of his eyes, no that’s not quite right, flashing through his brain, even the cousins he barely ever talks to and the Uncles he only sees at Christmas. When did that happen? They are such a close-knit family, aren’t they?

They always were at Hogwarts. And when he was little. And now they aren’t anymore. Are they?

He tries to remember how he feels when he meets them, at the graduation, or at Christmas, or when there’s a birthday party. Is he not there with them anymore? Has he stopped fitting into the place that was always his, ever since birth?

He doesn’t think so, no, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Has he not spent half of Lily’s graduation waiting for it to be over? Why is it that he never takes a holiday and stays in his routine rather than going out to see his family spontaneously? Doesn’t that mean he’s already lost the connection?

The connection to what? Al doesn’t even know. His family, maybe? What he thought his life would be? Himself?

And now he’s coming back after he up and left the country for three months without any explanation? What in the world is wrong with him? How could he do that? It’s incredibly stupid and childish and irresponsible, what the hell was he thinking?

Is he ever even thinking anything at all?

Yeah, the remote-island brain part thinks. Now he’s definitely crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I surprised myself, there's almost fluff in this. Well, really it's just the calm before the storm, so I guess I'm still me.   
> Either way, this fic has been getting so many more hits this week, I feel like I have crossed some sort of treshold. Thank you to all of you for reading (this might just be the same four or so people who click on it everyday, but I'm flattered either way!)  
> I hope all of you enjoyed this chapter, I'd be delighted to hear your thoughts.   
> (Even if it's about the lack of gerunds. My sister told me randomly that I don't use a lot of gerunds and now I'm self-conscious about it. Does anybody else notice that?)


	8. try to stay awake and remember my name (but)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the emotions don't let themselves be repressed anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bad mental health in this chapter! Just as a warning!  
> (Mostly just crying and negative thoughts, no self-harm or anything like that)
> 
> Two skills I would like in life:  
> 1.) Knowing the difference between American and British English (and Canadian and Australian and so on and so forth). This story follows Al's point of view pretty closely (unreliable narrator!) and obviously he speaks Brithish English, but I probably mess up on that all the time, which kind of destroys the whole point of view a bit. Well, I guess I'm going to have to live with that.  
> 2.) Rating a fic accurately. I mean, there's not gonna be any violence or sex in this which I feel like is the most obvious indicator and not that much swearing, so I suppose it could be gen, then again I don't think pre-teens would enjoy/relate to this story very much. Then on the other hand I kind of doubt children younger than idk twelve are on ao3 anyway, so who even knows...

Is he ever even thinking anything at all?

Well, apparently this stupid sentence, along with variations of that same loop of how stupid and terrible and tired and lonely he is all the time, by choice. He’s doing this to himself and even worse, he’s doing this to everyone else too. Why? Why is he like that? He hasn’t always been, he’s sure, when did that even happen?

That’s the spiral still in place the next night at work at the _Nightowl._ In face of shame and his internal turmoil, Al has managed to avoid Fawley (and anyone else he knows, for that matter) ever since he arrived home late the day before (or early today? It doesn’t really matter) and thus has another reason to feel even worse. At the same time, he can’t stop it. He can’t stop it at all. He can barely hold it in.

That’s what he’s doing. Holding it in. And getting more ice cubes out of the freezer in the back, because apparently, today they are in high demand.

He’s trying to focus on work, trying to blind it all out again, trying to shove the whole realisation back the hole it came from that day on Lily’s graduation and where he kept it all summer with a tight, tight lid—probably the mental equivalent of clingfilm and love.

It’s only barely working, maybe because Al feels guilty for trying in the first place, feels guilty for so many things that are all basically the same, aren’t they? And there he is, doing it _again_ , because he just can’t, he just doesn’t know, and there’s nothing—

The clingfilm is torn, has been irrevocably destroyed.

The tears are washing up in his eyes again and Al presses them down forcefully for maybe the millionth time this night.

If he can just get through this damn shift.

But what then? Will he go home, go to sleep? Will he even be able to? Will he just hide more, pretending to sleep? Will he crawl in that terrible, soulless, dark and lonely room of his and just hide there forever like the terrible person he is?

No, he needs to—he needs to get more ice.

He almost trips on his way back to the front and for a moment, his vision fades in and out. He presses his eyes together until he can see again.

Even so, his movements are unprecise and sluggish and he’s sure anyone who payed any closer attention to him would notice immediately, maybe assume he’s drunk.

He presses his hands against his face and tries to regain focus.

There are some empty glasses he needs to collect.

It’s a Monday night, meaning there is not a lot of business and there’s also some other event going on the other side of town, so Cath’s the only bartender working tonight. It’s just as well, really, because she might be a bit more forgiving if he totally sucks at this job.

He reaches for the empty glasses and notices that his hands are shivering. He takes them anyway.

He starts wiping the counters. It’s only been three or four hours on the shift, there’s still so long to go.

But it’s not like he’s doing anything after, it’s not like he has anything to look forward to, nothing to go back to, it’s not like he has any right to dread this work at all, because there is nothing else. This might be the only thing he consistently shows up to.

Cath has just finished a large order and comes over to help him with the countertops. Al raises his head to look around for any new customers. Black spots dance before his eyes for a few seconds, before he can see that the bar is pretty much deserted for now. People are on the dancefloor, but nobody here. It must be the especially slow time of the night, though he struggles to remember when that is, exactly.

His hand rest on top of the counter for a moment, the slightly wet wipe pressing into the palm of his hand. Cath almost bumps into him because of the sudden stop in his motion.

 _Don’t say anything. Don’t say anything,_ Al thinks, frantically.

He knows if Cath says something, anything, he’ll have to reply, and he doesn’t trust himself to open his mouth without starting to cry and he _can’t_ just start to cry.

“You okay?”, Cath says loudly, but over the music it sounds more like a whisper, not enough to alert any of their customers.

Wrong question. Wrong damn question. Of all the questions in the world…

Al feels the tears welling up even without having to open his mouth, welling up in a way he simply can’t hold back anymore, without a sound, without a cry or a wail, simply the tears rolling down his face, making his cheeks wet and salty and for a tiny moment, nobody even notices.

Then Cath looks back to him, because he didn’t say anything, can’t say anything, can’t even open his damn mouth and Al thinks _Don’t look, don’t see_ , but of course she does, of _course_ she does.

She drops her stupid wipe on the counter next to his hand where his is still digging into his palm and somewhere there is the remote sensation of pain in his wrist, but it doesn’t really matter right now, Al can barely feel it at all.

There is some sort of look in her face, maybe shock or even concern, but Al can’t really tell because his vision is blurring again, this time not because his brain is giving out or because he hasn’t slept, but because of the tears.

“Hey, Al”, she says, her voice frantic and not quite loud underneath the music, but loud enough. It’s like he’s hearing her through glass. “Did something happen to you?”

Al feels another wave of terrible emotion well up, at this point he can’t even tell which, not that it matters at all, it’s just more tears, more salty water coming out of his eyes.

Cath touches his shoulder lightly with her hand, a gesture of comfort, maybe, but it feels like a shock to Al’s system. He doesn’t flinch, though.

Somewhere in the part of his mind that isn’t busy freaking out, he’s terribly embarrassed that she’s seeing him like this, that he’s putting her into this position where she needs to deal with his crap when it has nothing to do with her at all.

But mostly he can’t focus on that, because there’s just no energy left in his mind and something there has resigned itself to the act that this is happening and there’s nothing left to do for Al to stop it.

Another wave of tears come over him and this time he does make a sound. It shivers through his core, high and ugly and pathetic.

He blinks and he can see Cath’s face again, a clear look of panic on it.

“I’m sorry”, Al tries to say, but it almost doesn’t come out, just barely escaping between sobs.

“Come on”, she says, and tugs at his shoulder, leading him through to the back room.

Al almost stumbles over the doorstep, but manages to catch himself in time.

She must find him a chair somewhere, because he’s sitting down and Merlin, his hands are still shivering so much and he’s still crying and it’s all terrible and he’s even more terrible, this is so pathetic, but he just can’t stop. He doesn’t even know how.

He blinks some more and can see Cath’s bright eyes again, staring at him widely. She’s squatting down to look him in the face, her hand still on his shoulder.

“Shit, Al”, she turns her head for a second, looking towards the door, then pulls a package of paper tissues out of her pocket and offers them to him.

Al takes one and feels the shame rise up in his throat. He raises it up to his face, partly to wipe away the mixture of tears and snot, partly to cover his face.

Cath glances back over her shoulder again and tightens her grip on his shoulder.

“Listen, Al, I can’t—“ She takes a deep breath. “Shit. The bar can’t be left alone, so I need to go back out or we’ll both lose our jobs.”

She blinks, too, a bit frantically, Al can see her clearer now that he has the tissue.

She stands back up, slowly, hesitantly, and her hand falls off, but it’s still outstretched as if she doesn’t quite want to leave.

Al can feel the next wave of tears come up in his throat, so he doesn’t say anything. He gets it, he really does, she can’t let that happen, obviously. They’ve never talked about it, but he knows that Cath definitely needs this job. He can’t ruin that for her. He’s already ruining too much for too many people.

 _Or maybe_ , he thinks, _I’m not ruining anything at all. I’m just slowly fading out of everyone’s life and it doesn’t even matter. They don’t need me._

Then he thinks back to Lucy and how he must have hurt her. _Maybe it’s better that way._

But he doesn’t want that.

“Just”, Cath says, “Just stay here, alright? Don’t—don’t do anything, okay?”

Al’s still trying to hold back the new wave of emotions so he just nods and holds his breath until she’s left the room, before he starts silently sobbing again.

He doesn’t want her to hear, but he also can’t help himself.

_What is happening? And why is it happening now? Why not before, why not when he left?_

He doesn’t know how long he’s crying, it could be a few minutes, or maybe half an hour, or maybe longer, but eventually he runs out of tears and the terrible thoughts curse through his head on their own, without any waves to accompany them, because Al’s tear ducts are as empty as his chest feels.

 _Merlin, all of this is_ so _stupid,_ Al thinks and he wants to cry some more over it, but he just can’t anymore.

For a while he just sits there, and his head is a strange mixture of spinning around the same thoughts and empty at the same time.

So, he listens to the sounds of the room instead, the creaking of the old breakroom and the faint music from the door.

Cath’s left it a bit open, maybe on accident, maybe on purpose, Al doesn’t know.

He should be out there, helping her. Doing the entire bar on your won is tough, but even the thought feels hollow. Does it even matter that he’s a terrible co-worker anymore, when he’s already established that he’s a terrible friend and a terrible cousin and probably also a terrible boyfriend? If he’s even a boyfriend at all. The thought gives his stomach another blow. Maybe Felina could see that in his cards. How _pathetic_ he is.

 _Yes,_ Al decides in a sudden burst of determination. It still does matter.

He gets back on his feet, still feeling light-headed and unsteady, but he pushes through it and lurks towards the door.

He comes to a stop right before it, trying to gather his strength, but his vision goes black again and he has to wait until he can continue, concentrate on his breathing and on the music outside. He grips on the door handle.

He can hear Cath talking over it. _Chatty guests?_ Probably some poor heart-broken drunk rambler. Fitting for a Monday night in a bar.

His eyesight is slowly coming back to him and he can make out some of the words.

“I could really use some help here”, she says. There’s a small pause, and Al can’t hear a response. He opens the door a little and takes another step. He can see her now, standing behind the bar, but there are still no customers. A small blessing, Al reckons, although he probably shouldn’t think like that, business-wise. It’s another point to check of the list: terrible employee.

Instead, Cath has a small object pressed between her ear and her shoulder. A mobile phone. Al has learned about them in Muggle Studies, but he doesn’t really know how exactly they operate.

“It’s just, I’m scared he’ll, you know—” Another pause, shorter this time. “Yeah, no, I get it, I just thought—” Pause. Cath sighs. “Yes, bye, I love you.”

She puts the phone in her hand and taps on it, Al doesn’t really know what that does, but apparently, she’s done talking to whoever is on the other side. Her girlfriend, probably, judging from the “I love you”. At least that is still happening.

Now however, it looks like she’s turning back around, and Al doesn’t want to look like he’s been eavesdropping, which he hasn’t—at least not on purpose, so he rushes back to his chair.

Only a minute later, she comes back in.

This time, Al’s eyes are clear enough that he can see the look on her face properly, a weird mixture of relief and concern.

She sits down next to him again, this time on another chair, not the floor.

“Are you feeling a bit better?”

Al’s throat goes a bit tight, but this time he can actually manage to speak.

“Yeah, no, I’m not—I’m not sure.”

It’s not a great answer, but it’s the honest one. It doesn’t do anything to reassure Cath, understandably.

Al doesn’t know if he’s feeling better. He’s not freaking out anymore, but nothing has been solved. He’s still tired and terrible and lonely and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Nothing’s really better, but he doesn’t want to think about it. He certainly doesn’t want to talk about it. Is there even anything to say?

“Listen”, he says, “I’m sorry, you—I’m sorry I left you alone out there. I’ll wash my face and then we’ll go back out, alright?”

He gets up and walks towards the tiny sink in the back, pressing his arms against it so she can’t see him wobbling on his feet. He really needs to get some sleep. And food, probably.

“Al, wait!” She puts a hand on his shoulder again and Al almost can’t bear it, but at the same time—at the same time, what? He doesn’t even know.

Al splashes the water in his face. It doesn’t help a lot, but a little is still something.

“Al”, Cath says again, and Al pulls out another one of her paper tissues to dry her face.

“Al, our shift is over in like half an hour.”

Al turns back around, for a moment confused. “It is?”

“Yeah”, she says.

“Well, that’s half an hour to work then.”

He turns toward the door and walks out back behind the bar. A quick look tells him that it’s basically dead, safe for a couple wildly making out in a corner.

Cath walks back out after him and Al goes to wipe the counter. It doesn’t necessarily look like it needs to be wiped, but that’s his job and he’s going to do it.

“Al, don’t you—you—I need you to talk to me.”

Al takes a deep breath.

“Let’s just start setting up for the morning crew, alright?”

The alcohol needs to be put away and replaced with coffee.

“Al”, she says again.

“I don’t even know what to tell you.”, he says and it’s true. He gets it, really, she just wants an explanation and she probably deserves one, too, but this is too messy for him to explain when he doesn’t even understand it himself. Besides, she can’t know about magic.

“I’m just worried”, she says and that goes right into Al’s heart.

She doesn’t even know him. Not properly. She doesn’t know his history, his world, his problems. Really, she doesn’t know the first thing about him. But she’s still worried. There’s kindness in that. Kindness he probably doesn’t deserve.

“Thank you for covering for me today.”

She makes a dismissive gesture. “Don’t even worry about it.”

They work in silence for the next half-hour and Cath doesn’t ask again. Maybe she’s scared to.

He feels bad for leaving her in the dark, for making her worry, but he really doesn’t have the first clue what he can tell her to make her feel better. Lie, probably. But Al doesn’t like lying, never has.

The morning crew comes in and Al and Cath retreat to the back room again. Carol says something about some festival that was apparently happening somewhere, the reason why everything was so empty today.

What kind of festival is on a Monday? Al doesn’t have a clue, but he supposes it’s good timing. Maybe. If there is good timing for a breakdown.

He’s about to leave when Cath stops him.

“Al?”

He turns back around and the spots in his vision catch up to him again.

“Yeah?” His voice sounds a bit funny, he realises.

“Are you—Where are you going?”

“Home, I guess?”, Al says. He doesn’t really get the question. Where else would he go? But at the same time he can see the image of himself, walking around London in the early hours of the morning just so he doesn’t have to face Fawley for a bit. But Cath can’t possibly know about that.

She nods, still looking a bit nervous.

“Just—are you gonna be alone?”

“I mean, I guess Faw—my roommate is going to be there I guess, but he’d still be asleep.”

It’s true, Fawley’s not exactly an early riser. But why is she asking that? It doesn’t really make any difference to her, does it?

“He won’t wake up?”

“He’s used to me coming back at odd hours.”

She nods, looking at the floor.

“Al, I know this is probably weird and annoying, but can you do me a favour?”

“Sure”, Al says, almost surprised by how easy it comes. That isn’t what he thought she was leading up to. But she’s just done him a massive favour if it can even be called that. He owes her probably for years to come.

“Do you want to switch another shift?”

She looks back up at him, clearly confused. “Jesus, no, nothing like that. Just—I feel like you shouldn’t be alone right now and if I just let you go, I know I’ll keep worrying about it.”

Al blinks. He didn’t expect that, either. “So…?”

“So we could hang out for a bit?”, she suggests, her voice small. “I mean, you don’t have to, but it would make me feel a lot better.”

Al blinks some more. Now he really doesn’t get it. Why the hell would she want to spend any time with him right now? He’s not only notoriously bad company, but she has witnessed firsthand what a mess he is. Besides, they just got off a long nightshift, half of which she had to do on her own because he can’t get his crap together. She must be extremely tired. He knows he is, on more than just one level.

But the way she phrased it makes it sound like he’s the one doing her a favour. Declining would probably be the really shitty thing to do. And maybe he could use a little company.

“Yeah, sure”, he says, “If you really want to.”

She nods and gives him a tentative smile. Al has to make an effort to smile back, but not as much as he thought he would have to.

“Just let me tie my shoes.”

Al waits while she does, but when she pushes for the door and Al gets into motion again, he has to stand still for a few seconds.

She looks back at him, confused.

“Just a moment”, Al says and waits for the dizziness to subside.

It doesn’t take too long, but she throws him another one of those looks, too careful. Worried, he guesses.

Al starts walking again and this time it works.

“It gets like that sometimes”, he says, feeling like he owes her at least a bit of an explanation, “when I don’t sleep enough or when I forget to eat.”

It’s true. It’s taken him a while to connect, but by now he knows that’s where his black spots and dizzy spells and headaches come from. They go away if he eats and sleeps enough and when he slips up again, they come back.

“Do you do that a lot?”, Cath asks, in an equally quiet voice. Now that they’re not surrounded by the constant music of the _Nightowl_ , it’s actually a quiet voice. He’s not used to that from her. “Forget to eat and sleep, I mean.”

“Not usually”, Al says, “Just sometimes when—” Well, when? He thinks of the times it was especially bad. When he was confused and had no clue what he was going to do. When he was too excited or too sad.

When he’s out of his routine. When his feelings get so much he can’t focus on anything else. That’s probably unhealthy.

“Just sometimes when I’m not careful, I guess.”

She nods again. “Let’s get something to eat, then.”

Al takes a deep breath and something lightens in his chest. That’s alright. He can do that. And she’s not saying anything else, for now, and Al’s grateful for that. For once, he doesn’t feel judged for his terrible adulting skills. What sane person forgets to eat when they get too sad or scared?

“Alright”, he says, then realises that doesn’t quite sound like how he means it. “Good idea, I mean. We should totally go eat, then.”

Merlin, he sounds like an idiot now. Maybe he can’t do it after all.

But Cath doesn’t mention his general awkwardness. Maybe she’s used to it by now. She does know that about him, he guesses.

“So we probably should go for something healthy”, she says instead, “but I’m tired as hell and I’m craving grease, so… …fish and chips?”

Al doesn’t have any objections. Now that he thinks about it, it actually sounds really good. Now that he thinks about it, he’s extremely hungry. “Sure.”

“Great”, Cath says and smiles back at him, “I know a great place nearby.”

* * *

Cath’s “great place” turns out to be a tiny shop that Al probably wouldn’t even have seen if she didn’t point it out to him. But sure enough, when the food comes, it tastes better than anything he’s ever had before and as he eats, he’s already starting to feel a lot better. That might just be because he’s extremely hungry and it’s food, but still.

The silence between them relaxes for a bit as they eat, transforming from a tense awkwardness regarding the situation to a shared sense of exhaustion and delight at being able to just sit and eat. They get each other in that sense: They know how to be exhausted together—their work usually is pretty exhausting and while exhaustion from dealing with whatever is going on with Al is different, it’s not by that much.

“That’s a lot better”, Al finds himself saying as he finishes his chips.

“Fish and chips are the solution to all problems”, Cath jokes, somewhat unattractively shoving a handful in her mouth. It’s a funny look on her, seeing as she’s usually so poised and reserved, even if not necessarily above everything else. Not that Al minds, of course.

Al cuts a grimace. “Not to mine, I’m afraid.”

He meant it as a joke, but Cath makes a sympathetic face.

“Is it really that bad?”, she asks.

Al shrugs. The truth is, he doesn’t really know. It certainly feels bad, but at the same time, he doesn’t really trust his own judgement anymore.

“I just feel like I’ve been making a lot of bad choices lately”, he says, “and I’m only now realising the effect it has on everyone else.”

Cath shoots him a look, but she doesn’t really ask for any specifics. “You seem pretty put together to me.”, she points out.

At this, Al has to laugh. The sound almost hurts in his chest.

“How in the world did you get that idea?”

Cath shrugs. “You don’t air your dirty laundry at work everyday?”

“Neither do you”, Al points out, “Besides, I literally just broke down crying in the middle of a shift and now you have to babysit me instead of going home to sleep.” He winces. Saying it like that really drives home how bad it actually was.

“That’s different”, Cath insists.

“Is it?”

“Everyone has bad days.”

“I’ve had a bad year”, Al says, maybe because he’s too tired, both emotionally and physically, to filter himself anymore, “maybe a bad two years.”

There is something in Cath eyes he can’t quite parse, not shock, but something else and he instantly regrets saying it.

Then something else occurs to him.

“Wait, I’m not keeping you from class, right?”

Just because Al is essentially stuck in a dead end regarding personal development or even the concept of a career, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have great respect for people who are working hard to further theirs.

He’s particularly fascinated by the concept of university—a place to study and advance knowledge just for the sake of it—and he’s spent some portions of his letters to Lily commiserating that they don’t have anything similar in the Wizarding World. There, research is mostly conducted individually by wizards and witches that can afford to spend time on it or, if it’s in extreme public interest, the department of mysteries.

As a young person seeking to advance their magical skills beyond the NEWT level, the best thing to hope for is a sort of talented mentor, similarly to how Fawley acts for Al. It’s not that much of an unusual relationship that the two of them have, it’s just that in Al’s case, there’s not much he can hope for in the future. Maybe to fill in Fawley’s somewhat obscure position of the go-to portraitist of Wizarding Britain when Fawley dies, but Al doesn’t even like painting portraits all that much. Stuck in a dead end is pretty accurate. He still doesn’t want to do anything else, which is perhaps the real tragedy.

Cath, on the other hand, Al’s almost sure is ambitious and probably also pretty successful in her studies, just judging from the way she conducts herself in her side job. She isn’t the type of person to do things halfway, not even in being decent to her hopeless mess of a co-worker. Al would hate to be the reason for her to jeopardise her dedication, even if it’s just in missing one class.

“God, no, of course not”, Cath replies, “I usually try to take classes that start late enough that I can at least get two or three hours of sleep in after work. I’d be totally useless otherwise.”

“So I’m just stealing your sleep instead of your perfect attendance?”, Al asks. Merlin, his filter really is gone. It’s really not much better, though.

“I need to eat anyway”, Cath says dismissively, and with that there’s not really much else to say.

They finish their food in silence.

“Thanks”, Al says again, still awkwardly, but he’s really feeling a lot better. He’s not sure why, exactly none of his problems have been solved by this whole thing. He’s still a social recluse without any perspective who routinely cuts out his family and friends and he still has to go home and face Fawley and then try and make up with Lucy somehow and explain to everyone why he fled the country for three months without saying anything. But he’s feeling a little better.

“It was nothing”, Cath says, even though it really wasn’t. Al doesn’t know how to insist on that point though, so he just gets to his feet without arguing.

“Take care”, he says, “Try to get some decent sleep in before class.”

Cath gets up as well. “I’ll try”, she says, “You take care as well.” She hesitates before she continues speaking. “I know that’s probably invasive, but Al, if you really have been having a hard time for two years now, maybe you should consider talking to someone.” She hesitates again. “It sounds scary, but it can help a lot.”

There’s something in the way she says “talk to someone” as is it holds a specific meaning Al’s not privy to. Something that goes beyond a friend or maybe his parents. But he can’t quite figure it out, and regardless, the advice probably applies either way—not talking to people is what got him into this mess in the first place. So he just nods.

“Yeah, I probably should.”

Clear relief crosses Cath’s face, mixed with a hint of surprise. What did she expect? That he would disagree?

“See you tonight, then”, Cath says.

Right, they have another shift together this evening.

“Yeah, see you tonight.”

* * *

As Al makes his way home through the city, he decides to rip of the plaster straight away, while he can still hold on to the tiny shred of courage and optimism he somehow obtained. Sure, he’s exhausted and smells like an alcoholic, and Fawley’s almost certainly still asleep, but he’s going to talk to him right now. He has a feeling that if he doesn’t do it right now, everything will just spiral downwards even faster.

He locks the door open and drags himself up to the third floor, every step feeling like a chore. He really is exhausted. Still, he’ll do this.

He tries to open the door to the flat quietly. Maybe he’ll make tea, he thinks. Fawley always makes tea when he wants to talk, maybe it works the other way around, too.

But when he gets into the kitchen, the kettle is already on. Fawley is sitting at the table, looking right at Al. His blue eyes are piercing.

“Hello, Al”, he says, “nice to see you here again.”

Al is frozen for just a moment. That’s not what he expected. Fawley doesn’t get up at stupid o’clock in the morning. He simply doesn’t. Or maybe he does when Al hides from him for a day. Maybe that’s what it takes.

Fawley is still looking at him, while Al gets takes a chair and sits down. In a way, this is what he wants. Ripping the plaster of all right.

It’s just that he’s forgotten how intense Fawley can be. How much Al always feel like his eyes are seeing right through him. It’s not a good feeling. He’s going to push through it, though.

Al takes a deep breath. Where is he even supposed to start?

It looks like Fawley knows that Al is building up to something, because he waits for him to talk.

“I’m sorry”, Al breaks out. It’s a good point to start, he supposes, because ultimately, it’s the most important thing to say. “I just left without saying anything to anyone, that was really irresponsible and just a bad thing to do. And then I avoided you after coming back, that was bad, too. I won’t ever do something like that again.”

He means it, Al realises. He really means it. He didn’t even know that he was going to say it, but he does. It’s a promise, he decides, a promise to himself. He won’t ever go away again without telling anyone. He won’t ever make people worry like that again.

Fawley sighs and Al feels like he can see the air coming out of him. In a way, it’s scary to watch.

“Have some tea”, Fawley says, “and we’ll talk.”

Al gets himself some tea. “I actually did want to talk”, he says, “I think I figured out a few things we—some things I should probably talk about.”

Fawley gives him another one of these looks that say that he knows more than he probably should, more than is plausible for him to, but this time, Al is almost grateful for it.

“That’s good”, Fawley says, still lacking his usual hint of humour. He’s so sincere, Al isn’t used to that level of intensity from him.

But that’s it, though, isn’t it? He’s been putting up all these walls against things that are too much, too intense, too sincere—all except art, probably—and that’s how he’s ended up with this huge pile of bullshit.

“Do you want to start with what happened?”, Fawley asks and Al is surprised with how much he’s asking rather than demanding answers.

“I—” Al rubs his eyes, trying to help his concentration. “I was at Lily’s graduation, you know, my sister Lily, I’m pretty sure I told you that morning.”

Fawley nods as a sign for Al to continue.

“So I went there and it was this—this family thing, you know. And my family’s pretty big, I guess—” He stops himself. “No, that’s not really relevant. The point is, I was there, and I guess I wanted to be, but at the same time, I really didn’t want to? I just wanted to go home, but even more than that I just wanted to leave, to be far away, to be alone, I guess.”

He thinks about Felina for a second, but then decides that this isn’t really about her. She doesn’t need to be in this story. He doubts she would want to be, anyway.

“So you decided to leave?”, Fawley asks, his voice calm and strangely empty.

“No”, Al says “not just like that. I was talking to my cousin, Lucy.” He blinks. “She’s a bit younger, but we’re—we used to be quite close, I guess. But we haven’t been talking, lately—we haven’t really been talking since I graduated. And it wasn’t—she didn’t—it didn’t have anything to do with her, or anything she did, but she thought it did. She thought I was punishing her for something, you know, she has this friend that—”

Al’s voice breaks. All of this is getting so complicated.

“She’s done some things lately that a lot of people judged her for, I guess. And she thinks that’s why I’ve been basically ignoring her for the last two years, but that’s not it at all. I don’t care about that. But the thing is, there’s no good reason why. And I realised that, and I guess I just couldn’t deal with it. That’s why I left.”

Fawley is watching him with a mixture of understanding and a certain sadness in his face. Al wishes he could tell what he’s thinking, even just a little bit.

“And did it help, then?”, he asks, “Leaving?”

Al lifts his shoulders and lets them fall again. He considers the question. “Maybe? I guess not.” He has to blink again. It’s funny. He didn’t think he had it in him to cry any more today. “I think I figured something out, though.”

“And what’s that?”

Al blinks harder. This really is happening. “I’m not okay”, he tries to say, but it comes out like a whisper, “I think I haven’t been okay for a while.”

The tears are falling again. Maybe falling is too hard of a word, because it isn’t like it was before with Cath in the _Nightowl_ , violent and sudden. This is almost gentle, soft and without any resistance.

Al hears the chairs shuffle around him and the Fawley’s next to him, putting his arms around Al’s shoulders.

“Oh Al”, he says, his voice laced with emotion like Al’s never heard it before from him, “I know you aren’t, I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is a but shorter than usual, but it was also kind of hard to write for me, I'm really interested what you guys made of it! Did you see it coming?  
> (On that note, the next chapter might take a bit longer, as I'll have some important exams soon, but I'll try to hurry anyway!)  
> I hope you enjoyed reading and I can't wait to hear your thoughts!


	9. I'm scared to death (living this so lonely life)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al starts to pick up a few pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!   
> I know this chapter is a bit later than usual. That's one, because I had my exams and two, because so far, this has been the hardest chapter for me to write. I was not really prepared for the story to go into this direction, tbh, which is a bit dumb as in hindsight it's been a topic from pretty much chapter one, but whatever. We're here now.   
> It's important for me to say that Al dealing with his mental health issues here is not an accurate representation of how it should be done in real life. Everyone is different. I based some of his struggles and how he deals with it on my own experiences, but that doesn't mean it works the same for everyone. I'm also not saying Al is doing everything wrong here, I just wouldn't treat his experience as the absolute truth here. (For example, it would probably benefit him to see a therapist as Cath suggested in the last chapter. Sady, Wizarding Society fails us here--as it failed Harry in that regard tbh)  
> In any case, enjoy!

Al wakes up in the late afternoon. He’s now had some food, a shower and even a decent amount of sleep, but he still feels wiped. He gets up anyway. He knows from experience that it’s better that way. The thought startles him. He knows that from experience. Just how used has he gotten to this?

But he knows that if he doesn’t get up now, he’ll probably feel awful all night and it’ll be a pain to work. Of course, tonight that might be the case anyway, but still. He usually tries not to make himself actively more miserable.

So he reasons with himself to get up despite the bone-deep tiredness he feels. That probably doesn’t actually have anything to do with sleep, but still. He’s got things to do.

Yeah. He’s got things to fix.

Okay, one thing after the other.

Firstly, he needs to get up.

Fawley is sat in the art room when Al comes in, in front of a huge easel that he hasn’t seen before, but he covers it up before Al can see what he’s painting.

He stands up and goes to the kitchen, coming back with warm leftovers and offers them to Al. Al takes it, surprised. That’s not usually how this works. Usually, Al is the one between the two of them that makes the food. He’s taken over that so long ago—he remembers how worried he used to be that Fawley would just get lost in art and forget that food existed at all if Al wasn’t there to remind him. It feels stupid now. Fawley’s gotten through life for decades before Al came around. How arrogant to think he couldn’t handle himself without him.

Al swallows, not even tasting whatever it is that he’s eating. He’s not sure he’s deserving of this kindness, but he’s grateful, nonetheless.

He tries to sort through his thoughts while he’s eating. They’re still a jumbled mess, but he feels significantly calmer than this morning. Maybe this isn’t a catastrophe. Maybe he can handle this.

He needs some sort of plan. Merlin, if only he was any good at all at plans. But he’s not. If he was, maybe he would have one for his life by now. He’s twenty years old, for Merlin’s sake. He should have a plan by now.

He takes another bite and shuts down that train of thought. He’s almost surprised that it works.

He should just put that thought on the list, he tells himself. The list of things that are probably wrong with him. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Okay, sure that’s probably not his most urgent problem. What is his most urgent problem?

He tries to apply the Rose method of solving problems to this. Be methodical, one thing after the other, be prepared. Except that Rose’ method of solving problems was basically to never have any by always being prepared. And, he remembers, pretty crucially, in the end that didn’t really work for her, either.

And then it hits him in the face like a ton of bricks.

Rose—his parents, Lily, Scorpius! Do any of them know where he’s been all this time? Surely they can’t, can they? He left suddenly in the middle of a family thing and specifically told nobody where he was going! Sure, they knew he had plans to travel for the next day, but still. He just disappeared! That’s not something you just do. They must have been so worried! And he didn’t even think about that aspect of it until right this second.

The guilt stabs through his stomach hard. Isn’t that his problem, though? He doesn’t even think about how other people must feel about the stuff he does. How it affects the people he cares about. Maybe that should make him feel like an asshole, because it’s an asshole move, but it doesn’t. Instead it just fills him with fear. Is that really what he’s like? Has he always been like this? Or has he become this person? If so, when?

He feels his thoughts spinning out of control again, but another part of him just feels strangely detached. So that’s another one for the list, he thinks. Learning—no, remembering to be considerate of other people again. That one, he thinks to himself grimly, is really bloody urgent.

Freaking out doesn’t help. What can he do now? One thing at a time.

Okay, so his family and friends were probably worrying about him. Surly they must have come to look where he went, right?

He ignores the screaming somewhere in his brain that nobody would do that, that he’s already messed up so bad that none of them even care anymore and turns around to Fawley.

“Did—anyone come to look for me?”

Al almost winces. He hates how pathetic the question sounds, how desperate, like he’s looking for lifelines. In a way, he is.

Fawley looks up. “Oh, yes, of course.”

For a moment, Al’s heart fills with relief. It’s almost stupid how much of him actually believed that nobody would care or notice him just disappearing—but then Fawley continues.

“Your brother came here, actually. He’s an interesting young man.”

Al’s mind flashes back to the conversation he had with James at Lily’s graduation, the one James spent mocking Al for basically every decision he’s made in his adult life and this time he really does wince. Not that James is completely wrong, of course, considering how messed up Al is, but it’s not in the way James thinks and in either case, that doesn’t mean that Al wants his brother to get into his business. Fawley has nothing to do with Al’s poor choices, he’s maybe the only good one he’s made in his adult life. A meeting between the two of them, Fawley and James, is something that Al would want to avoid under the best circumstances, and having them talk without Al even being there to do damage control is basically a nightmare. Then again, right now, Al’s emotional capacity to care about that is maybe not exactly zero, but pretty close to it. It’s a pain he probably deserves.

“What did he say?”, he asks anyway. It’s probably better to know, for when he has to face James again if for nothing else.

“Oh”, Fawley says, “A lot of things. As I said, an interesting young man.” The glint in his eyes that was frighteningly missing last night is back now.

“Don’t worry about it, though”, Fawley adds, “I told him that I needed to send you away for the summer on urgent business for me right away.”

Al blinks. “That was a lie.”

Fawley shrugs. “Barely. You were on urgent business, after all. Broadening your horizons. Honing your craft. That’s urgent business.”

“That’s not”, Al starts, but he isn’t sure what he actually wants to say. That’s not true? Not what he was doing? Not how literally anything works?

“So my—they all think you sent me away early for the summer?”, is what he asks instead.

“Essentially.” Fawley says it so casually, as if he hasn’t lied to Al’s entire family and made himself look bad in order for Al to look better. He just says it like it’s nothing.

Al is overcome by an intense surge of affection and for a moment it even manages to chase away the thick cloud of bad feeling that he’s been trying to keep away with plans and lists and problem solving. The affection is quickly followed by guilt as he remembers the look on Fawley’s face this morning. Fawley, too, must have been extremely worried. And he’d lied to Al’s family saying Al was safe, when in reality he didn’t actually know himself. _That’s probably bad on some level,_ Al thinks, but he can’t be arsed to care. It’s an incredible gesture, that’s what it is.

He wants to apologise, but he’s almost sure the words would fall flat.

“Thank you”, he says instead.

Fawley only shrugs in response, but Al meets his eyes. He doesn’t know any better way to convey what he’s feeling.

“Well, you’ll just have to live with the knowledge that your brother isn’t too impressed with my personality.”

Al huffs. It’s not Fawley’s personality that James doesn’t like. Which is to say, he was never going to like Fawley anyway, but that doesn’t have anything to do with his character.

Al gets up to wash his plate. The hot water almost burns his fingers and pulls him into the moment for a second. He doesn’t even know what it is that he’s eaten.

He takes a deep breath and resumes his efforts to think. Be rational.

So his family doesn’t think he’s dead. They also don’t think he’s an asshole that disappeared for months on end for no reason. That’s good, he supposes, if not entirely deserved.

What else is on the list?

He doesn’t have his life together, he’s being inconsiderate for no real reason that anyone can discern (least of all Al himself), and he apparently ghosts people without noticing for possibly the same reason.

It’s a pathetic list, really, but right now, things don’t really get much better than pathetic.

Al can still work with pathetic. He’ll have to.

So what is he doing now?

 _Try to be considerate and don’t ghost people?_ , his brain supplies helpfully.

He probably should just reach out, right? Write a letter saying that he’s back. That’s the opposite of ghosting, right? And apologise. That’s considerate. Apologising. Then again, considerate people have nothing to apologise for, but that ship has sailed. Yes, he decides. Apologising it is.

To Lily, certainly. He bailed on her graduation party, which, well, it’s probably unacceptable. And to Lucy. Crap, that’s going to be hard.

He takes another deep breath. One thing at a time.

He gets paper and a pen out and writes a short note to Rose and Scorpius, then another one to his parents. Both have basically the same content. He’s sorry for leaving so abruptly but he’s back now. It’s a short note without any real feeling to it, but honestly, it’s all he can manage for now.

He realises that he doesn’t actually have any clue what Lily’s doing right now or if she’s even living at home, so he writes a separate one for her, apologising some more.

He sighs when his quill leaves the paper. That was exhausting. It’s just a few stupid notes, but he feels like he’s run a Marathon or something. It really is pathetic.

He glances up at Fawley’s old grandfather clock.

Crap, he needs to get going. Work, the evening shift. It really shouldn’t be allowed to have a night shift and then an evening shift the next day.

Oh well. If he hurries, he probably has enough time to get to the post office before.

He’s not sure if he’s glad about that or not. No delay for him to recover before he has to deal with everyone.

He shakes his head. He’s not dealing with them—

He sighs. He’s too tired to argue with himself about words.

* * *

Al comes home just a bit after one o’clock and this time, Fawley really is asleep. Usually, Al uses this time to paint, or to walk around London. He’s not sure if he can bring himself to do that now. It doesn’t feel right. Then again, nothing really feels right now.

He just stands in the flat for a while, not quite knowing what he’s supposed to do with himself. He goes to get himself a glass of water, which is how he notices the notes on the kitchen counter. Both are addressed to him.

He takes a deep breath and goes to open the first one. He really doesn’t want to, but he’s trying here. He’s not ghosting people. That includes opening letters right away, even if he has to force himself to. There’s no rational reason not to do it, anyway.

The first one is from his parents, his father’s scratchy handwriting. It’s just as short as Al’s original note, just expressing his parent’s apparent joy that he’s back and an invitation for dinner on Sunday. Nothing unexpected, really. Al always goes to their house for Sunday dinners. He can’t muster up any enthusiasm at the thought right now.

The other note is from Rose, equally short and saying much of the same thing, if with a slightly different tone. He can basically hear her voice beneath the loopy handwriting.

_You’re back! See you tomorrow at the Leaky Cauldron, all right?  
Scorpius says hi.  
Love, Rose_

Al sighs. If he wants to cancel now, he’ll have to go back to the post office the moment it opens this morning, which is at a time he most definitely wants to be asleep. That’s kind of all he wants to do if he’s perfectly honest. Just sleep. When you’re sleeping you don’t have to deal with anything else.

He probably shouldn’t cancel anyway. He doesn’t actually want to avoid his friends, does he? Then why does the thought of meeting them fill him with nausea?

The thing is, he really doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the same way he doesn’t know why any of this is happening to him. It’s so unfair. He doesn’t want this, not any of this, not the dread at the thought of talking to his friends, not the numbness and the insomnia and the restlessness. And even more than that, he doesn’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense. He’s got no reason to feel like this. His life is fine. He doesn’t have any real problems. Why the hell is he feeling like this?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t get it and he hates that he doesn’t get it. If he himself doesn’t understand it, how is anyone else supposed to?

His mind flickers back to Fawley for a moment, and the way the old man had held him this morning, not unlike Al’s father used to when he was little and sick or sad. The way he said he knew. Fawley understands, maybe, but Fawley’s not like other people. He doesn’t understand thing the way other people do, or at least not like anyone else Al knows. And to think that Al used to think he was a helpless old man. Fawley is probably the most brilliant soul he’s ever met.

Al sighs. He wanted to be just like him, when he first learned about his work. What a joke. He can only dream of ever being just half as good as his teacher. In more than one respect.

He presses the glass against his lips and forces the water down.

He’s still so tired. Not physically—just, hell if he knows.

In a burst of frustration, he gets up. He gets a free easel and a new canvas and some paint and he just starts.

There’s some yellow at first and red, and blue, and Al’s not even sure if he’s actually painting or just throwing paint at the canvas angrily, or is it even really anger?

And he doesn’t know what it is that he’s doing, but he can’t stop until he suddenly does and his head’s foggy and his arms hurt, and he has no clue what it is that he just made. He blinks against it. The sudden emotion that overcame him is gone now. He isn’t even sure what it was, but he’s back to numb.

Al gets up and washes his hands. They’re covered in paint, even more so than usual. Almost in trnce, he washes the colours go down the drain. There might be some kind of meaning in this, but if there is, Al’s forgotten its language. He puts his paintbrushes away responsibly and cleans up, almost on autopilot. Then he changes into his pyjamas and goes to bed.

* * *

Al wakes up in the early afternoon, earlier than his usual, but then again, he supposes he went to bed early as well. He isn’t actually sure. Fawley is in the art room at work when Al goes to make himself some breakfast.

He really is feeling better today, he thinks. He’s not sure what it is—but his toast tastes like toast again and his head doesn’t feel like it’s packed in clouds. He doesn’t really feel great, either, but it’s definitely an improvement.

The prospect of meeting his friends later today still makes him slightly uncomfortable, but it doesn’t feel nearly as unmanageable as yesterday.

Al still doesn’t get it, not any of it, so he doesn’t know what has changed, but for now he’ll take it.

He doesn’t trust it, though.

He makes himself busy while he waits for their usual meeting time to come. He starts on Fawley’s correspondence, takes stock of their groceries and their art supplies. He makes a shopping list and tidies up. The tasks give him a strange comfort.

It’s strange, probably, that he does this when he’s feeling bad, but it’s the way he’s learned how to deal with this. Be busy, do things for other people. It’s what he’s been doing all this time. It’s only when he tries to do something for himself when he starts to struggle. This is fine though. It’s for Fawley, not for him. And he’s done all of these things a million times. That makes it easier, too.

The afternoon passes like that, like a weird calm after all the storm he’s been having. It’s not that it’s over, it doesn’t feel like he’s fine now, he’s just fine for now. A little bit. In a very fragile way, but whatever.

He still feels uncomfortable as he goes out to meet Rose and Scorpius. Uncomfortable is probably not the right description. Anxious is more like it.

For some reason he keeps thinking back to what Cath said the day before. Al should probably talk to someone. Al agreed then. He still does now, but he also has the sight to know how completely crazy this whole thing is. What the hell is he even supposed to say?

But sometime today he’s gotten the idea in his head that that’s what he’s supposed to do now. Talk to Rose and Scorpius. They’re his best friends. They’ve known him for so long (in Rose’ case, literally his entire life). If anyone has to forgive him for being terrible, it’s them. If he can’t tell them, what even is the point? They’re his best friends. His _best friends._ If he can’t tell them, doesn’t that mean that it’s hopeless anyway? If he can’t tell them, can’t trust them, surely that means that he can’t connect to anyone anymore at all. That it’s too late for him.

That’s what he thinks when he walks into the Leaky Cauldron. And yet.

They’re happy to see him and they aren’t mad and they’re not acting like they think he’s a terrible person. And yet.

They’re nice and they don’t push him and they’re his friends the same way they’ve always been. And yet.

And yet Al just can’t say it. He can’t spit it out. He can’t even open his mouth. And even though he’s right there, with his very best friends who he loves so dearly, he feels very, very lonely.

* * *

The strange thing is, time still moves on. Maybe that’s the problem he’s had this entire time, Al muses one morning. He doesn’t know what he’s doing and he’s freaking out, but time just moves on. And he can’t catch up.

He doesn’t think he can, anyway. He still makes himself try, though.

He gets back into his routine. It’s not quite as hard as one might think it would be. Al has had his routine for so long now, he’s always kept himself busy. Being busy is not a bother. He can’t think as much when he’s busy. It’s probably a double-edged sword, but whatever.

So he starts again. He starts cleaning and cooking and making meal plans, he goes shopping and answers letters. He works the bar with Cath. He leans into the work, focuses on it as much as one can focus on such things. It helps a little, he thinks. He’s not sure.

Maybe it’s that he’s doing what he’s supposed to do. His job. Helping Fawley, who he owes so much to. If he can do that, then he’s doing at least one useful thing.

But yeah, the routine. He gets back into that.

* * *

On Friday, he gets a return letter from the post office. It’s the note he sent to Lily that first day. They’ve sent it back. Delivery not possible.

Al frowns at it for a whole minute. What the hell does that mean?

He does have quite a lot of experience with the Wizarding post office, unfortunately. In Al’s opinion it’s pretty much the worst way to communicate, but since Fawley doesn’t have a chimney and neither of them owns an owl, Al’s kind of out of other options. Still, that’s never happened to him before. Maybe he didn’t pay them enough?

He writes another note.

He gets his answer on Sunday when he goes to visit his parents.

He doesn’t want to, wants to go even less than he wanted to talk to Rose and Scorpius, but he still goes. Trying to be considerate and not to ghost people. That’s him. Besides, Fawley knows he’s supposed to be going. That makes it harder to bail.

Dinner with his parents is—well, it’s fine. They kind of insinuate that Fawley’s a terrible employer for making him leave a family event, which, well. Al probably should clear that up, would if he was a decent person, but today, he doesn’t have it in him. He doesn’t have it in him the same way he didn’t have it in him to say anything to his friends. It’s just too much for right now. And if he tried to explain about Fawley, he’d also have to try and explain himself for what really happened and he can’t. He just can’t. He still feels bad about it, though. He just tries to steer the conversation away from that. He’s not going to quit his job with Fawley, that would just be plain stupid. What else would he even do?

So dinner is maybe not the most pleasant, but at least he finds out about Lily. She, as it turns out, has left the country. She’s gone with James to America to study at a Muggle university. The news his Al like a punch in the stomach.

He knew that Lily was getting her Muggle credentials along with the Wizarding ones, of course. It’s rarely done, mostly by genius type muggleborns who can handle it on top of everything else, but it’s possible. Lily, who always goes above and beyond simply because she likes, no, loves knowing things did it as well. She’s kind of a genius, after all, even if she’s not a muggle-born.

Still, Al didn’t think—he didn’t know that she would—he thought she wouldn’t—it doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t actually know what he thought she would do after school. He hadn’t payed it that much mind. He didn’t pay anything that much mind, though, so that isn’t special. Well, whatever he was thinking, he thought she’d be here. Close by. He thought he could—maybe—they—he doesn’t know. He really doesn’t know.

It takes him almost two days to figure out that he’s jealous. Even then, he’s not sure of who: Lily or James.

* * *

He keeps trying. There are two things he’s doing. Routine and trying. Sometimes the two of them blend together on the bad days where he has to try to even maintain his routine, but that’s not very often.

There are two things he’s trying at mainly.

The first one is talking to Scorpius and Rose. He keeps meeting them and meaning to do it, but then when he’s there he just can’t. He doesn’t know what they’re thinking about it, the way he’s behaving because every time he tries to think about that he inevitably starts thinking about what they would think instead and then he gets in a weird whirlpool of terrifying thought that just makes him want to hide under a pillow and never talk to them again. Which obviously isn’t an option. Also, he doesn’t even actually want that, it’s just—well, he doesn’t know.

Sometimes, somewhat selfishly and definitely nonsensically, he wishes he didn’t have to tell them. It’s not that he doesn’t want them to know. He just wishes they knew already. They’re friends, aren’t they? Best friends. Doesn’t that mean they should know without him having to say something?

And maybe they do. Maybe they know something, understand that something is going on the same way that Fawley understands and they’ll understand it all and he doesn’t have anything to worry about.

But maybe not.

In the end, the first break of his paralysis comes completely unplanned. Scorpius is not even there for it.

Rose and Al are getting hot chocolate on Rose’ study break because one day, Al remembers that Rose gets too much in her head when she’s studying and that’s another thing he’s trying, right, being a good friend, so he gets her out of the flat.

He’s not even trying to talk about it, because Scorpius isn’t there and it’s not at all like how he planned, or anything, really, it’s just—

He almost says it without meaning to.

“I’m scared.”

He’s talking very quietly, almost too quiet for Rose to actually hear him, but she does.

She looks up from her menu where she’s been studying the different types of hot chocolate. Her face is—well, it’s very serious.

Al forgets sometimes that she can be so serious, because between the two of them, between the three of them really, Scorpius will always be the serious one and at this point, their friendships are so entangled that he struggles to view them not in relation to each other. But Rose has experienced things Al can barely imagine, no matter how she tries to explain it. He probably shouldn’t be forgetting that. He doubts she can.

“I’m scared”, he says again, because whatever, he’s already said it and he can’t back out now, anyway, even if he wants to, “that I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Well, that’s not quite it, is it? But it’s some of it, he supposes. It’s definitely a part of it.

Rose folds the menu together, putting it down on the table. She reaches across the table and squeezes his hand. There’s a smile on her face, but it’s neither the fake, bland media kind, nor a truly happy one.

“Me too”, she says, which is definitely not what Al expected. His confusion must show on his face.

Rose just shrugs. “You know me. I’m a perfectionist and I obsess over every tiny decision I make.”

He does, he knows her, he knows this is true, but it still doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t that the reason she always knows what she’s doing?

“Of course I’m scared”, she says, like it’s obvious and barely worth an afterthought, “but why are you?”

Al shrugs right back at her. Somehow, he manages to feel even more lost than he did before. “Because I have no clue what the hell I’m doing?”

It’s true, he doesn’t. Neither with his life, not with the stupid thing he’s feeling. Not feeling. His problems. Anything, really.

Rose sighs deeply, but she doesn’t contradict him. “I think nobody does, probably.”

Al can sort of see what she means, but that’s not what he’s talking about, not really. He can’t imagine this is how everyone feels, so utterly _lost._

“That’s depressing”, he tells Rose anyway, because it is.

Rose shrugs again. “Maybe.” This whole conversation is just becoming a series of shrugs.

Maybe that’s why they’re silent for a while. No words, no shrugs.

The waiter comes around and Rose orders the most basic hot chocolate.

Then, there drinks have already arrived, Rose starts talking again.

“For what it’s worth”, she says, “I think you’re really brave, you know. Doing what you really like.”

Al knows she means his painting, not his job at the Nightowl, nor his status as an errand boy for Fawley, but he still struggles to see himself as ‘doing what he likes’. He’s not doing anything. He’s just messing around.

“Aren’t you?”, he says, instead of facing that particular problem, “Doing what you really like, I mean?”

He always thought that was a given. She’s been so determined to be a healer, so excited about it too—that can’t have all been nothing.

“Yeah”, Rose says, “I think so. I hope so. But that’s different—what I’m doing is easier.”

Al can’t see the universe in which throwing some paint on a canvas could be considered harder than saving actual lives, and it’s certainly not this one, but he doesn’t want to argue with her.

“Still”, he says, not willing to give up completely, “if I’m brave, then so are you.”

Rose is back to shrugging. “Maybe.”

They sit for a few minutes, each in their own head, sipping their respective drinks.

Al doesn’t think he’s particularly brave—he never had to be, so he isn’t. But he really does know Rose, knows her well enough to know that she doesn’t really believe him either. But he believes it. And he believes her that she thinks he’s brave. He doesn’t get it, but he knows she’s not lying to make him feel better.

So there they are, the two of them, believing more in each other than in themselves. There’s some irony there somewhere, he thinks, but he doesn’t have the brain to decipher it.

The thing is, he doesn’t know what else to say to that. He’s not sure if there even is anything that would make any difference.

At the same time, he’s not sure if he’s said the right thing at all—if that counts as him talking about it, opening up, solving his problems. If this counts as him stopping being that ugly, terrible, tired person he’s become that can’t connect with his friends anymore because he’s forgotten how to breathe without making himself lonely.

But the truth is, he is. Sharing with his best friend since birth because what he said is true. He’s scared and he doesn’t think he has enough bravery to deal with it. And he’s told Rose. And she doesn’t have any solutions either, but he told her. It has to count for something.

And even if it doesn’t, that’s what he has to offer. Right now, there isn’t anything else there.

So he looks at her and grins. It’s not even that hard. “Scorpius is really brave.”

Rose snorts, still a rare sight on her, but not as much as it used to be. “He is.”

Al’s smile grows suddenly in a way he can’t really control. “Bloody Gryffindor.”

He catches her eye and the two of them burst out laughing.

Yeah, so maybe that’s all there is for now. But still—the wall that is there at all times, separating him from everything including his friends and his own feelings—it feels a little bit thinner.

* * *

The second thing he’s trying to do is making things right with Lucy. Well, it’s probably more accurate that he’s trying to figure out how to make things right with her. He’s thought about it quite a lot.

Lucy thinks that he’s not talking to her because she’s friends with Carolina—or whatever their weird relationship qualifies as—despite the admittedly sort of grim family history there, when in reality, it’s just because Al’s being a bloody idiot that can’t handle himself and doesn’t think about other people’s feelings. He’s not judging her, if anything he should probably be worried about her. She seemed, well, she seemed different. Maybe that’s just because she’s resigned herself to his idiocy, but still. Now that he makes himself think about it, it leaves an uneasy feeling in his stomach. She looked so tired. She’s only sixteen.

But what can he say? Does he even still have the right to say anything? But if he says, nothing, isn’t that even worse?

He should already have done something about this. Preferably a few months ago. But he didn’t, and now he’s still pondering it, almost a week and a half after he’s returned to London.

Cath is in an exceptionally good mood today, marked by her hair down and her unusually mild lipstick—pale pink instead of the dark red she usually goes for. Her cheeriness only serves to contrast Al’s pensive moods even more.

“Are you okay?”

The question comes during a bit of a slower portion of the night and, as always, just when Al doesn’t expect it. He has to keep himself from wincing. He knows she’s just checking up on him, which, frankly, is a nice thing to do. It really is. It’s just—the question in and of itself makes him want to disappear in a hole. Or maybe get rid of his face, so nobody can ever read it, yeah, that would work, too. But that kind of reaction is not rational and besides, he feels like Cath is probably well in her right, considering, so he usually forces to give herself a half-decent answer.

“Just thinking”, he says, which, well, it’s not a lie.

“Don’t strain yourself”, she teases, and Al throws her a look, but he’s not actually offended. In fact, this makes the whole embarrassing affair a lot better. He can just throw that look and pretend it’s not a completely awkward situation. Or maybe it really isn’t that awkward anymore.

“Ha ha”, he says and continues without thinking: “I offended a family member and now I’m trying to figure out how to make it better.”

Cath makes a face. “Urgh. Just smile and look really sorry at the next family reunion? That’s what I usually do.”

It sounds like she has a lot of experience with this very specific problem, which throws Al off guard, even though it probably shouldn’t. What does he know about her life?

He’s forgotten that a bit, maybe, since she now knows more about him than he ever thought he’d be comfortable with. Mainly that he definitely has some sort of problem and broke down crying about it. It’s not actually as bad as he might have thought it’d be, of he ever thought to imagine a situation like this before. She treats him much of the same, apart form the occasional heightened awareness of his mood maybe. Al appreciates that. There’s still a little shift there, though, a bit of added understanding in their work-relationship that wasn’t there before. Maybe that’s why he forgets that he doesn’t actually know her.

“I don’t think that would be enough in this case”, he replies, frowning.

“Jesus, you must have really judgemental great-aunts.”

Al’s so caught up in his thoughts about Lucy and Cath herself that it takes him a moment to get where she’s coming from.

“Oh, no, it’s my cousin, Lucy. She’s sixteen and she’s not judgemental—” He pauses for a moment, considering, because that might not actually be true. Lucy sure like to well, at least to observe people. There must be some judging involved. That’s not the point, though. “In any case, it’s my fault. I really messed up there.”

Cath looks up from her place restocking the bar. “That sounds serious.”

 _It kind of is_ , he thinks, but he feels dumb saying it. “It’s complicated.”

She does this weird thing with her eyebrows. “You’re not going to tell me anything about it, are you?”

Al shrugs, because the truth is, while this is complicated, it’s going to be even harder to try and explain it without mentioning the minor fact that that they’re wizards.

She gives him a measuring look. “Well, whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Just call her.”

For a moment, Al has to fight with the image of shouting Lucy’s name through the bar, until he realises that Cath probably means to call her on a telephone. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

“Don’t have a phone”, he replies without thinking.

Cath, who’s gone back to her task, turns around to face him again. “Seriously?”

“Yes? Lucy doesn’t have one, either.”, Al didn’t think it’s that much of a big deal. Not every wizard has an owl. Surely there are tons of people who don’t have phones.

“Okay…”, Cath concedes, clearly weirded out. So maybe there aren’t tons of muggles who don’t have phones. Shit. He needs to back up.

“There’s no signal at her school.”, he tries to explain. He’s pretty sure that’s true. Electronics don’t work in Hogwarts, so he doesn’t actually have any clue whether or not there is service.

“And she couldn’t use a phone elsewhere?”, Cath asks, “You know, when she goes to hang out with friends and stuff?”

“It’s a boarding school.” At least that’s a sensible answer there.

“Your sixteen-year-old cousin goes to a boarding school without any signal and doesn’t have a phone? The poor girl. How has she not rebelled yet?”

She has, Al thinks privately, but not in the way Cath thinks. Besides, she’s not giving Hogwarts enough credit. Sure, there’s no signal there, but other than that, it’s pretty awesome.

“It’s not that bad there.”, he says, but struggles to explain how. You can’t exactly explain Hogwarts to someone who isn’t supposed to know about magic.

“So you went there, too?”

Al blinks. He forgot that she wouldn’t know that. “Uh, yes.”

She snickers. “I never would have pegged you—" She pauses and giggles. “Then again, that literally explains so much about you.”

Al raises one of his eyebrows. He’s not even sure what that’s supposed to mean. Sure, Hogwarts’s had a pretty big influence on his life, but on the other hand, he doubts it’s much like other boarding schools without any phone reception.

“So why don’t you have a phone?”, Cath asks, when she’s stopped laughing at him. “I mean, your cousin doesn’t have a phone because she goes to that weird school and can’t use it, which, questionable, but whatever, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have one. It’s not like she’s the only person you could call.”

Al really doesn’t want to tell her that basically none of his friends and acquaintances have a phone.

“I guess I just never got one. Never saw the point.”

She gives him another look like she’s seriously doubting his mental capacities. “You might want to try and arrive in this century at some point.” She’s done restocking and just leans against the bar. “How do you communicate with anyone at all, anyway?”

“I write letters?”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously.”

“Doesn’t that take forever, though?”

“I mean, kind of?” It does. It really does take forever. It’s beyond annoying.

Cath just shakes her head. “Well, I guess you can just write her a letter then, can’t you? To your cousin I mean. Lucy was her name, wasn’t it?”

Al nods, slowly.

“Just say you’re sorry, then. You know, explain yourself, beg for forgiveness, try to do better. The whole shebang.”

“Just like that?”

Cath shrugs, checking the freezer for ice cubes. “That’s really all you can ever do, isn’t it?”

And maybe it really is.

* * *

He’s just getting out of the shower after his shift and about to shut the sun blinds and go to sleep, when he notices the owl at the window.

He sighs and goes to open it. It’s kind of ironic, considering the conversation he’s just had with Cath.

 _Oh._ It’s for him. And it’s from Rose. That’s weird. They literally just saw each other today. Well, yesterday. In any case, it’s been less than twenty-four hours.

He’s instantly filled with worry. Has she figured out that he’s a terrible friend that can’t even talk properly anymore? Maybe she’s telling him to never bother her again.

 _Get a grip_ , he tells himself, _that doesn’t even make any sense. You’re just being dumb and sleep deprived._

He unfolds the note, his eyes gliding over the familiar handwriting.

_Al,  
I need you to go running with me. Don’t argue with me.  
Love, Rose. _

Al stares. Then he reads the whole thing again. No, that’s really what it says. What the hell is her problem?

Maybe that is why he just turns around the parchment, grabs a paintbrush (he doesn’t have a quill at hand, okay, and he’s too tired to go look) and writes only one word.

_WHY?_

He sends the owl on her way and goes to bed. He really, really needs his sleep.

He wakes up again, roughly six hours later. That’s another thing he’s figured out lately. He doesn’t think he’s very good at it yet—the being considerate and not ghosting people, as evidenced by the little progress he’s made so far, but it all works considerably better when he sleeps some. He needs something around six hours. He can’t really manage any more than that, but if he does six hours of sleep, everything else is just a whole lot easier.

He holds the thought for a moment. That might be important, somehow. He feels like there is still something to figure out there.

For now, he’s making breakfast. Well, it’s a little past noon, meaning it’s breakfast for Al and something like brunch for Fawley. They both have a weird sleep schedule. Whatever, at least it’s somewhat regular.

He braces himself for the day while he’s getting up. The conversation with Cath comes back to him. He takes a deep breath. Right. So he’s going to write a letter to Lucy. No more excuses. He’ll do it today. And he should probably go shopping. They’re running out of food.

He starts by making breakfasts. Yogurt and the healthy kind of cereal because that includes all major food groups and Fawley’s been looking a bit pale lately. Al doesn’t know what that is about, but he reckons healthy eating can only help. He’s so immersed in the task that he almost doesn’t notice the owl.

It’s the same as yesterday. Rose, then. He wonders if it’s hers. She’s been talking about getting one for a while now.

He takes the note.

_Need to get in better shape for my job and I can’t exactly ask Scorpius, so you’re it. Besides, you need sunlight every once in a while, anyway.  
Love, Rose. _

Al sighs, but he doesn’t feel particularly unhappy. Looks like this is happening. Rose could just go alone, of course, or even ask Scorpius for real—Al is sure he would go with her, even if he can’t actually run, but even so. She’s too determined to be told no now and to be frank, Al doesn’t care that much to argue with her. At this point, it might just be less effort to just go along with it.

_Rose,  
Sure, whatever. I’m not going anywhere in the mornings, though. I need sleep at some point.  
Al. _

Then, he makes the effort to ignore the urge to just get lost in sketching random kitchen items for hours on end and starts working on his letter to Lucy.

He’s about halfway done when Rose’ reply comes in.

_You really need to get a sensible sleep schedule at some point. Is four okay? I don’t want to go in the dark.  
Love, Rose_

Al considers this. It cuts into his art time, which is all of his time when he doesn’t have to work and also not immediately after he gets up. Immediately after he gets up, he tries to do errands and get stuff done for Fawley. Art time is when he can’t be bothered anymore, which is the majority of his day, really. Art time for Al is a bit like what for other people might be screaming-their-frustrations-against-a-wall time. But he’s trying to be more social, isn’t he? Running with a friend must count as being social. And there still is a lot of art time left.

_Rose,  
My sleep schedule is fine, it’s just at a different time than most people’s. Four is okay, do you want to start today?  
Al._

Al looks at his watch. Today would mean in about two hours. He takes a deep breath. He can manage that. He thinks. Anyway, what would happen to him? It’s not like too much social interaction will kill him or something. It’s just that he feels like it might. But it’s Rose. Just Rose. He can manage Rose.

He looks back at his other paper, the one he’s spent the last hour on trying to explain what the hell is up with him to Lucy. Looking at it like that, he wants to rip it up and starts over. He exerts an incredible amount of self-control and doesn’t. It’s not like it’s gonna get any better.

He’s followed Cath’s list: Explaining himself, asking for forgiveness, stating his intentions to do better. And she’s right, there’s nothing else to say.

He takes a deep breath and goes to get an envelope. He really hopes this will work. Maybe then he’ll stop feeling so guilty. Or at least start to stop.

He’s half an hour into almost literally throwing paint onto a canvas (not that anything good is really coming from that, but at least it makes him feel a little better) when Rose’ owl is back. She—Al doesn’t really know if she’s a she, but whatever—is a pretty well-behaved one, if a little shy. Al digs up an ancient owl treat from somewhere to reward her for her busy afternoon, before he opens the note.

_See you at four then. Soho Square Gardens.  
Love, Rose. _

So then there’s that. Well, he still has a little time to try and salvage this canvas.

* * *

Running with Rose is a bit of an awkward endeavour, mostly because they’re both ridiculously out of shape. Rose is determined though, so they spend an entire hour intermittently jogging around the park. By the end of it, they’re both red-faced and exhausted, but Al doesn’t mind that much.

It’s not exhausting in the way he was the most concerned about, even scared of. He’s tired, but not tired of Rose. He even enjoys her company the way he always has, ever since he was a small child. There’s something reassuring about that. And because they’re so busy with running, they don’t even have to talk that much. That makes it somehow easier. It shouldn’t, probably, but it does.

Still, he’s a little surprised when she tells him “See you tomorrow” instead of “Goodbye”.

Looks like he’s going running again tomorrow. Well, why the hell not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this chapter and I'm excited to hear your thoughts! Thanks for reading!


	10. it takes a push and a shove (somehow it's never enough)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al gets some good advice, dismisses it immediately and then proceeds to follow it anyway. Talking is still really hard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm not really qualified to talk/give advice about mental health issues, so keep that in mind reading this chapter.   
> In light of recent events: Black lives matter.   
> In light of the fact that this is a Harry Potter fanfic: Trans people are valid af.   
> I hope you enjoy this chapter!

It becomes a thing. The running becomes a thing, that is. It becomes a thing in addition to the other thing that is already going on, which is Al trying and failing to actually talk to his friends. Sure, he’s cracked the whole issue open a little bit over hot chocolate with Rose, but still. He didn’t say what he planned to and even so, it’s not remotely enough.

But he goes running with Rose. Running and not talking.

Besides that, he doesn’t do much. Art, work, his usual routine. His second note to Lily is returned again, the one he sent before his parents told him what she’s doing now. He sends another letter, this time by muggle mail, which takes even longer than the owl kind, but he doesn’t really see any other option.

Muggle mail takes forever, especially across the big pond. Owl post doesn’t take as long, especially not when it’s just to Hogwarts. At least it shouldn’t. And so Al waits.

He waits, follows his routine, goes running and tries to talk to his friends.

Waiting, as it turns out, doesn’t come easy to him, which is funny, considering it’s all he ever seems to be doing. Waiting until he finds out what he wants. Or who he is. Or even just to find out how anything works at all.

But now that he’s waiting for something tangible, something he feels like it could arrive at any minute, just show up at the windowsill, it’s so much worse.

The worst parts are the moments he thinks it’s happening.

Like when he’s at the ministry to pick Scorpius up for bowling. It’s the newest of Al’s efforts to be less of a recluse. He’s come to the conclusion that if he just makes more of an effort to spend time with his friends the sharing part will come naturally, the way it did when they were all living in the same castle.

So, bowling.

Right now, though, he’s waiting for Scorpius to get done with work for the day. Al’s pretty sure that Scorpius has been officially off duty as of at least half an hour ago, but of course he’s caught up in some kind of paper or the other that he needs to “get done real quick”. Al doesn’t mind that much. He knows Scorpius, after all.

He doesn’t actually know what it is that has Scorpius so busy right now, though. After he basically eliminated the need for his old job at the Portkey Office, they transferred him to the Department of Magical Games and Sports instead, whose purpose, frankly, Al doesn’t really know. They must have something to do with major sports events, but Al hasn’t bothered to keep up with that kind of stuff in ages. He should find out about it, though, probably. What it is that Scorpius is doing, that is, not so much major sports events, unless it involves that. Knowing what his friend does is one of the base lines for being considerate, he’s pretty sure and that’s what he’s aiming for after all.

That’s when the owl flies in through the window.

Scorpius looks up, obviously surprised, which, well. The ministry is underground and the windows, weather and all are completely fake, and while they aren’t impossible for owls to get through, it’s kind of rare. There’s memos within the ministry of course, and mail from the outside to a certain department wouldn’t come to either of them. So really, that only leaves personal letters.

This one, however, seems to be for Al.

He gets up from his spot on Scorpius’ colleague’s chair quickly, scrambling to open the knot tying the letter to the owl’s leg. His fingers are shaking, so he messes up on the first try and for once it’s not from forgetting to eat or sleep. It’s just, well—It’s not like he recognises the owl, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be from Lucy. Or Lily for that matter, Al doesn’t really know how she does her communications these days. Finally, he manages to get it off and takes a look at the recipient.

Alistair Fawley.

Al feels his shoulders drop and there isn’t even anything he can do to stop it from happening. It’s not like that means anything. He just has to wait a little longer. There’s no reason to be discouraged just yet. Except he totally is, even if he’s trying not to be.

“Were you expecting something else?”, Scorpius asks and Al startles.

He didn’t realise his friend has been paying attention this whole time, but now Scorpius is looking at him, face searching. He’s put his paperwork down and away and his gaze is almost too honestly curious. Something about it fills Al with a strange embarrassment. He’s not sure why, but the thought that Scorpius might have been reading something off his face and his motions makes him uneasy, even if Al doesn’t really know what would be there to see for him. Maybe even more so because of that.

He shrugs, trying to brush the whole thing off, but Scorpius propels himself closer to him by pushing his wheelchair along the desk.

“Who’s it from?”

The question is perfectly reasonable and appropriate, and it’s not like it’s a secret—just some new fancy customer of Fawley’s, and it’s not like Fawley’s particularly concerned about mail privacy—he basically threw his correspondence at Al the day he met him. And yet.

And yet the way he says it makes Al want to pull up high walls around himself and hide behind them, ones that won’t betray him like his face does to a boy who’s been his friend for almost ten years. It doesn’t make any sense that he feels like this, but he does.

“Not sure”, he replies, which is not lie. He hasn’t opened the letter and he doesn’t recognise the sigil, so he doesn’t actually know, even if he can make a pretty well-educated guess. Those letters are all more or less the same.

But before he can say or do anything else, Scorpius has taken the letter out of his hand and looks at it.

“Fancy”, he comments, and Al snatches the letter back quickly. He puts it into his back pocket, which maybe doesn’t quite live up to the heavy envelope and the expensive ink, but Al can’t bring himself to care. Whoever wrote this letter will never find out, and if they do, they’ll just have to deal.

“Ready?”, he asks Scorpius, trying frantically not to be too weird. He knows he’s failing; he can see it in Scorpius confused face. Scorpius drops it, though, lets it go like he always does. As pushy as he is in literally every other area of his life, he never pushes with his friends. Not with Al, and certainly not with Rose. Al appreciates that about him.

“Yeah, sure”, Scorpius says, “let’s go.”

And so they go. On to the bowling alley.

* * *

The thing about bowling is, Al mostly picked it because he couldn’t think about anything else. The three of them are pretty boring as far as going out goes. None of them are particularly into partying or drinking or clubbing. Al spends most of his nights working in a bar, so even if he is feeling social, that kind of activity isn’t very high on his list. Rose, he suspects, doesn’t like uncontrolled situations like that—too much noise, too many people, and alcohol that escalates everything—Rose has come a long way as far as letting loose goes, but that doesn’t mean clubbing constitutes her idea of fun. And Scorpius, well, he doesn’t really bother either. There’s the fact that neither Rose nor Al are much for it, and Scorpius’ health doesn’t allow him to drink much anyway. And while he could probably still make it work, the wheelchair-slash-rollator-slash-crutches don’t help a lot, either. Overall, there’s just not a lot of enthusiasm for that kind of activity. Not that it matters, since they’re all pretty much on the same page.

It's just that, as a result of that, their usual activity of choice is just, well, hanging out. Whether it’s in Scorpius’ and Rose’ tiny flat or at the _Leaky Cauldron_ or getting coffee doesn’t really matter all that much. The problem with just hanging out is that there’s not a lot to do, except, well, talk. Which is why it probably should be Al’s preferred activity, considering that’s what he’s trying to do, really. Talk to his friends. But when there’s nothing else to do, he just sort of gets—well, overwhelmed. Hence, bowling. That’s supposed to be fun, isn’t it?

It turns out to be… …fine.

The three of them embarrass themselves by not knowing at all what they’re doing and being generally terrible at bowling. The old man working the alley must think they’re complete weirdos, Rose and Scorpius more so then Al, funnily enough.

But that’s mostly because they’re not nearly as used to being out in the Muggle World as Al is—a weird thought really. He didn’t realise that he’s gotten this good at blending in—and he probably hasn’t, considering his recent conversation with Cath about phones—Merlin, what a disaster.

Al considers this for a moment while Rose makes her shot—or whatever it’s called in bowling. She throws the ball, anyway.

He really spends almost as much in the Muggle World as in the Wizarding one. He wonders if that’s a good thing. Then again, what about is supposed to be bad? It’s not like Muggles are any worse than wizards, therefore neither is there world.

Rose hands him a bowling ball. Oh right, it’s his turn. He throws it almost without aiming and it gets of the lane immediately, landing in the gutter. Al looks at it and wishes he paid more attention. Another stupid metaphor for pretty much everything that’s going wrong in his life. Peachy.

“Are you all right?”, Rose whispers while Scorpius takes his turn. Unlike Al, he’s taking exceptional care, weighing the ball in his hand with concentration.

Al’s startled by the question and almost wants to repeat his last thought back to her and just say “peachy”, but he stops himself. It would be flat and terrible and dishonest and even if he sucks at being open, he doesn’t want to lie, especially not if she’s asking him directly.

Okay, honesty. This is a good opportunity. Even as he tells himself that, he has to force the words out.

“I’m not sure.”

“Did something happen?”

Al feels his throat close up. He doesn’t look at her, just shakes his head.

That’s the thing though, isn’t is? He doesn’t have any good reason to feel this way. Nothing’s happened to him. Really, nothing ever happens to him. Or at least he can’t figure out what it is that happens. He just feels bad. Or nothing, really.

And right now, he’s standing in a bowling alley feeling bad for feeling bad. It’s just so damn stupid.

“I’m just not okay sometimes”, he says and it’s a better explanation, the best one yet. Al wonders if Rose remembers what he told her over hot chocolate. If she can connect the incidents to represent his badly articulated feelings.

“I’m trying to make it better”, he adds, because he is and he’s already talking so he can’t stop now, “It’s not working very well today.”

“Oh”, Rose says and for a moment, that’s that. “Can I help you somehow?”

Al shrugs and his heart tightens. If only. He can barely help himself, doesn’t know how at all.

“Not sure what you could do.”

“Your turn, Al”, Scorpius says, turning back around to them suddenly.

His face does something weird, but Al just takes the ball before he can ask. It’s probably cowardice that he’s taking the easy way out of this conversation, but he can’t help himself. This is just about as much honesty and vulnerability as he can handle right now.

* * *

It's another week until the letter from Lucy actually comes.

_Dear Al,  
I decided I’m too tired to hold grudges. Besides, I don’t like being a hypocrite. I really don’t have the emotional energy to be honestly mad I guess, so there you go. Forgiveness.   
I could tell you all the ways this whole thing makes me mad about the structure of Wizarding Society, but I know you don’t really get that, so I’ll save both of us the energy. What I’m saying is, things need to change. For you, and for Caro, and for basically everyone else, too. Our parents, everyone who was involved in the war, probably… Merlin, I’m so angry. Sorry, that’s not the point.   
Anyway, we have limited resources, but I’ve done a bit of research and I’ve come up with a few things that might help a little: Basically it comes down to this:_

  * _Try to eat well and drink enough water and get enough sleep. It sounds like that kind of thing isn’t that important, but body and brain are connected. It might not make all the problems go away, but it’ll help a little._
  * _Try to get up and do things even if it’s hard. I remember you as a pretty proactive person. Maybe that has changed now. Setting a routine helps, but you need something. Your brain takes nothing and goes crazy with it, it really does._
  * _Try to be social. So I gathered that was at least a big part of the whole problem, but I think it could also be a part of the solution. Isolation is bad for people, Al, seriously. I know Scorpius and Rose check in with you and your parents obviously, but still, try to be mindful of that, even if it’s hard and goes against your instincts or whatever. People aren’t meant to be alone, even if they are really introverted._
  * _Try to be nice to yourself. So this is a big one, and since I’ve started paying attention to it, I see it in people all the time, it’s terrible. Al, please don’t be mean to yourself, even if you mess up. It doesn’t help anyone, and in the end, you only get worse rather than better. So please stop talking so badly about yourself. I was pretty mad when I first got your letter, but in the end, it just hurt to read. Please have a nice thought about yourself. Think about something good that is coming._



_Yeah, so that’s pretty much it. I know it’s not a lot, but that’s what I could come up with. I think most of them just help you be in touch with your body and reality a bit more. In the real world, things aren’t as scary and terrible as in your head, that’s why it’s supposed to help. I know it’s still very hard. It’s not your fault you feel like this and it doesn’t have to be like this forever.  
Please don’t make any rash decisions or do anything stupid.   
Lucy_

_P.S.: Please talk to Scorpius. He’s a good friend and he’s worried about you. He didn’t say anything to me, but I can tell._

Al’s read the letter about fifteen times now.

He’s replied to it, too, said thank you and sorry again and almost told Lucy what a piece of garbage he is for being so stupid, but then he remembered, and he didn’t. He still thinks it’s true, though, so he isn’t sure if there’s any benefit to just not saying it.

It’s not the response Al expected, honestly. Then again, he doesn’t even know what kind of response he expected, even though he spent so much time anticipating it, dreading it as much as hoping for it. Whatever his expectation was, it wasn’t that. She’s giving him advice. She’s done research. He didn’t even know there was research about people who have everything and just feel bad for no reason. Something inside him feels distinctly weird about the whole idea of it and its implications. Does that mean there are more people who feel like this?

On the other hand, what the hell. How does Lucy even know any of this? For Merlin’s sake, she’s sixteen! She’s basically a baby. How can she know so much more about this topic than he does? (Well, he didn’t even know it was a topic that expended much beyond just him personally, so topping his knowledge probably isn’t all that hard, but still.)

Not that he’s not grateful. It’s incredible how she can just forgive him like that. Still. _I’m too tired to hold grudges_ and _I don’t have the emotional energy._ Those are the words she used. Some of that scares Al a little for her. She sounds so much older than he remembers her and so much more exhausted.

He thinks of her, tiny first year that she was, bouncing around and bothering him and Rose and Scorpius because for some reason she thought they were more interesting than the kids her own age. She was loud and cheeky and sneaky. He thinks about Lily’s graduation and the way she looked there. Now she’s exhausted and serious and obviously knows a lot about sad people.

He thinks about Lucy’s friend Carolina, who’s probably the saddest person Al’s ever met. Unlike Al, she has a pretty good reason for being messed up like that—what with the magical Death Eater experiment causing her to be frozen in time as a young child and then waking up twenty-five years later with her parents gone and everything she was taught considered a crime. Sure, the pureblood supremacy she was probably raised on _is_ a crime, but still. Overall, not a pleasant ride in life. Definitely a reason to be sad. And, even considering everything that’s happened the past couple of years, that’s all that’s left, as far as Al can tell. Just a huge pile of sadness. Al wonders if that kind of sadness can seep out of a person into someone else. Maybe that’s what’s happening to Lucy. Maybe he’s also contributing to it, piling his own problems on there.

The advice itself, well. It all seems very not-enough to him. They are so small things, all of them, how could those little things possibly help that much? It doesn’t make a lot of sense in Al’s mind. He’s already doing some of them, for one. He’s never really had trouble with doing things. He usually just focuses on doing one thing and sinks the rest of his life into a routine that keeps himself alive. Isn’t that kind of what she’s suggesting, anyway?

He can see the point about sleeping and eating though. He tends to forget about it when he gets to distracted by other things and then the shaking and the blurred vision and all that starts back up. It’s annoying, sure, but that doesn’t mean it has an effect on his ability to connect with his friends and family in a normal way. Or maybe it does? It seems far-fetched, but—well, he’s already figured out that he has an easier time when he sleeps enough. He’s never considered water, though. He doesn’t even know if he drinks enough water. How much is enough water? What does enough water even mean?

Trying to be social, that makes sense. He is trying to do that, at least. Trying to be social, trying to be considerate and to not ghost people. Same difference. It’s not working all that well, but he’s trying.

Then there’s the whole thing about being nice to yourself. Al’s not too sure what he thinks about that. What does being mean to yourself even entail? _Please have a nice thought about yourself. Think about something good that’s coming._ Al doesn’t really see the point in that. After all, what good is it to think about something good when you’re trying to fix the bad parts Isn’t that just distraction from the real issues?

Then again, Lucy’s just a sixteen-year-old girl. She might be smart and helpful and tired beyond her years, but that doesn’t mean that she has all the answers. It’s kind of stupid of him to expect her to. Not that he did. It’s really sweet of her to try though. He appreciates it. Sure, she might not be able to solve his mess, but then again, he doesn’t really know how to solve it, either.

What really gets to him is the P.S. though, which is funny, because it’s honestly the one thing he probably should have expected from Lucy. She’s always been like that, knowing things about people that she shouldn’t logically and butting into other people’s problems.

Scorpius is worried about him. Not a surprise, really, but having it (as good as) confirmed doesn’t feel very good either. Al needs to talk to him. He’s talked to Rose, at least a little. If he can talk to Rose, he should be able to talk to Scorpius, too. He’s not sure why, but the thought of it feels a lot harder. Why? Why does he have to be like that?

Still, he writes a reply and puts the whole letter in his pocket, along with his watch and the picture of Felina. He’s enchanted the picture with the same spell Fawley uses on his works when Mrs. Marlow or a muggle customer comes to the flat—it hides the magical properties. That way, dragging it along wherever he goes doesn’t feel like as much of a risk. That, he wants to. A little reminder, no matter where he is.

He’s not sure why he carries the letter around with him the same way—it just feels too important to just leave lying around or throw away. So there it is.

It’s not only its physical presence that stays with him, though.

* * *

He’s still thinking about it when he meets up with Rose to go for their daily run. He’s almost surprised that the running is happening, but they’ve been doing it every day since Rose more or less forced him to start. It’s not that he minds exactly—it’s exhausting, of course, but it’s also feels good in a weird, different way—it’s just that he’s pretty sure that if she wasn’t making him do this, he would never have the motivation to continue the whole thing. But she is. She continues to show up every day, so Al does, too.

As usual, they don’t talk while they make their rounds through Soho Square Gardens—they simply don’t have the breath for that. They’re getting better, sure, but they’re still not exactly the fittest people in the world.

Al keeps thinking about it, though—it races around his head faster than Al could ever run.

That’s why he speaks up when Rose opens her water bottle after they finish.

“How’s Scorpius doing?”

Rose blinks, and swallows, offering her bottle to him. Al takes it. He’s forgotten his own again, and it reminds him of Lucy’s letter again. She wrote about drinking enough water. Al still doesn’t know what exactly enough water constitutes. He takes a sip.

“Okay, I guess. The Gobstone World Cup is being held in England this year, so they have him on that.”

Al puts the bottle down. “I didn’t know there was a Gobstone World Cup.”

Rose shrugs. “Me neither, but apparently it’s a thing.”

There’s a pause.

“Lucy told me he was worried about me.”

Rose misses a beat. When she speaks again, her voice is almost too casual. “You were talking to Lucy?”

Al forces himself to not give in to his instinct and give a non-answer.

“I wrote her a letter. To apologise for not being in contact and stuff.”

“Oh.”, Rose says.

“She said Scorpius was worried.”

Rose sighs. “Merlin knows where she’s getting that from again. Honestly, sometimes I think she’s putting some sort of bug in our flat or something.” She sounds as is she’s only half-joking.

“So it’s true, though.”

Rose gives him a look. “What do you think, Al?”

Al doesn’t have an answer, but she continues without waiting for one, anyway.

“Of course he’s worried. You know him, he’s always worried. And you’ve been” She hesitates. “You’ve been behaving a bit worryingly, you know.”

He has, but he hasn’t though to call it worrying, exactly. Sure, he’s thought about his behaviour making his friends angry, or maybe confusing them, but worry? He’s been acting like an asshole after all, even if he didn’t really do it on purpose.

“I know”, he says anyway, because the way Rose says it almost makes it sound obvious. “I just kind of hoped he wouldn’t notice.”

Rose gives him another look, but while it’s still exasperated, a lot more softness creeps into that one.

“Is that why—”

“No”, Al says, “Not really. I’ve really been trying to—it’s really hard.”

He doesn’t know if she quite gets what he’s saying. He doesn’t know if he himself truly gets it.

“Yeah”, Rose says, “Talking is sometimes. In my experience, not talking is worse though, in the long run.” She makes a tiny pause. “You can give us some credit, you know.”

“I know”, Al says, “I know”, because he really thinks he does.

They say good-bye shortly after. Al still has a few things he needs to get done today and Rose is heading home to study for one thing or another. There are only about a thousand things one apparently has to learn in order to become a healer.

“Love you”, Rose says before she leaves.

“Yeah”, Al replies, “You too.”

And the days go on. Al just has a few more things he keeps thinking about.

* * *

Life moves on. Well, sort of. It’s maybe the scariest thing of them all. Al’s here, scrambling to keep things together, to keep himself together, really, but everything else just moves on.

In a surge of energy and courage he writes Lucy another letter to tell her that it’s not her job to worry about him and that he’s a bit worried about her himself. It feels a little bit too much of an intrusion, maybe condescending when he isn’t in a position to be, but he does it anyway. She’s just a teenager and he’s supposed to be the adult here. Even if he’s not very good at that.

Her advice stays in his mind as well as in his pocket, even after his conversation with Rose.

He catches himself considering the amount of water he drinks and paying exact attention to the hours he sleeps. He starts taking his water bottle places. Making meal plans at the beginning of the week and standing in the grocery store he starts contemplating whether the food is healthy. It’s not that they’ve been surviving on a diet of fast food and junk so far. Al just hasn’t thought all that much about it either.

He does now, though. He isn’t even sure why. He doesn’t really think it’ll help his problem (that’s still the best he can define it, still doesn’t have a better word for what it is), but the suggestion is like a flea in his ear, itching and never leaving him alone.

Eventually, he caves and buys a book on balanced nutrition from the huge muggle bookstore in the area and reads the thing maniacally, absorbing the knowledge like it’s a lifeline. It’s not really, but these days, some of the most mundane things can feel like one.

He learns about food groups and variety and different diets and a lot of it is kind of confusing, but Al still tries to apply it.

He buys a few more books. Then a couple of cookbooks. It’s not that he can’t cook—he’s been doing it for a while now and he has a decent amount of practice, but still—there’s so much more to learn.

So he doesn’t think it’ll help his problem, but that doesn’t mean it can hurt. Good nutrition is still healthy. And while it might not affect Al that much when he’s still young, there’s Fawley. He’s been more tired lately, Al thinks and maybe it’s just because he has this project on the big easel that he only ever seems to work on when Al’s not there, or the big new commission that came through the mail right to Scorpius’ office the other day, but it unsettles Al in a way. He remembers the flu his teacher had last year. He tries not to think about that.

Yeah, healthy food can never be a bad idea, can it?

So maybe he keeps thinking about the things Lucy says about food and water and sleep. It’s not like it’s a big deal. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with her advice specifically. It’s just an objectively good idea. Except that her letter has started it, so it totally has something to do with Lucy.

The other thing that haunts his mind, aside from the whole Scorpius-situation, is a lot harder to dismiss. _Please have a nice thought about yourself. Think about something good that’s coming._

Sure, it’s probably just a distraction from the real issues, but the words stay in his mind, almost a little to persistently.

And so Al tries.

_Have a nice thought about yourself._

He’s making breakfast or brunch or whatever it is that you call it when you get up in the early afternoon and eat then and nothing comes to mind. He goes shopping and fills a few pages in a sketchbook with drawings of the inside of the _Nightowl_ and he drinks water and runs with Rose and cooks dinner and sketches a little more and goes to his shift and he can’t come up with anything.

And that’s, well, that’s a little scary. He almost considers asking Rose or Fawley or Cath to have a nice thought for him, but then he decides against it. What kind of stupid question is that anyway? _Can you tell me something nice about me?_ A pretty desperate one. Fishing for compliments or something.

(He really should be able to come up with something himself. He knows he should, probably. A normal person could. And he already knows he’s not okay and Cath knows and Fawley knows and Rose knows, but he just can’t. Can’t ask.)

So he keeps thinking.

Sometimes he manages negatives of negatives, bad stuff that he doesn’t do.

 _I try not to lie to people_ (except that still nobody knows that he left Lily’s graduation on his own volition and that it’s got nothing to do with Fawley) and _I don’t really gossip behind other people’s back_ (but isn’t that just another sign he fundamentally doesn’t really care about anyone?) and _I don’t make girls uncomfortable in bars_ (like he sees way too much at the _Nightowl,_ but seriously, isn’t that he bare minimum of decency?)

They’re not really nice thoughts about himself, though. They’re reminders he’s not terrible in every possible way. _Congratulations_ , Al thinks to himself, _what an achievement._

Some days he manages stupid little stuff like _I’m okay at cleaning spells_ or _I’m alright at visiting my parents regularly_ or _I’m trying really hard._

He’s not sure if they count. It’s not like those are real qualities. They don’t matter in the large parts of what makes up a person, do they? Especially not that last one.

For now, though, that’s it.

Finding something that he looks forward to is a little easier, but not by that much. Most days he just thinks about seeing Felina again. But after a while that starts to feel like cheating.

So he goes for stuff like _Fawley has this huge new commission from the Diggory family_ or _The gobstone world cup is coming up,_ but those aren’t exactly right either.

Sure, it’s great that Scorpius’ work will come to fruition (probably), but honestly, Al couldn’t care less about the gobstone world cup. He doesn’t even like the game. To list it as something he looks forward to is more than just a bit of a stretch.

The commission happening might be cool, because it’s been ages since Fawley has taken a big job from a wizarding family, a real set of magical portraits that are going to be displayed as such, but it’s not really Al’s news. If anything, it’s just more work for him—figuring out appointments and specifications and putting just the right number of platitudes in letters. It’s a good thing, but it’s not Al’s.

But he doesn’t want to give up, either. He’s not sure why, but the thought that he can’t come up with anything isn’t just mildly scary, but also a bit insulting. Sure, he might not have the perfect life and he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but most of it, he chose for himself. And he doesn’t regret those decisions, for the most part. So he damn better like it, too.

In the end, he picks stupid things. _I’ll see Rose for a run today. I’ve got my favourite shift at work. When I finish this stuff and go home, I can go throw paint on a canvas._

They’re not perfect, either. Mostly they’re just stupid little things he does everyday anyway. Nothing to get worked up about. Most of the time they aren’t even that great, just, well, not terrible. But maybe if he tells himself enough that he looks forward to them, he actually will.

Sometimes it even works.

In the end, the only thing that’s left is talking to Scorpius. Al knows that he has to do it. He knew it before and he definitely knows it now, but somehow, this knowledge doesn’t help the process of doing at all. If anything, it only makes it worse.

He tries, and he tries again, and he knows that Rose is watching him, waiting for him to just finally get it over with and he can’t even blame her—it’s unfair of him to let his friend worry that much when he can make it so much easier by just opening up his mouth. Knowing what’s going on, after all, and Al knows this from experience, is always easier than being left to wonder.

Sometimes he just wishes Rose could tell him on Al’s behalf. She’s made it clear that she won’t do that, though, and Al supposes he sees her point. Sometimes it’s more important that things are said than that they are known.

He also kind of wishes that Scorpius would just corner him, make him talk. But Scorpius isn’t like that and they aren’t, never have been, and it’s unfair to suddenly expect that from him.

Still, it’s so hard.

And Al doesn’t have a clue why.

“Why can’t I just spit it out?”

He throws his paint brush in the sink with maybe a little bit too much force.

Fawley, across the room, working on preliminary sketches for the Diggory painting, looks up.

“What can’t you spit out?”

Al flinches. He didn’t realise he was talking out loud.

He wants to retreat, say it’s nothing, but then he looks up and meets Fawley’s gaze. He has something about him that makes it hard to keep anything to yourself. Besides, Al’s not supposed to do that anymore, anyway.

“About, you know, everything. How I’m doing and stuff.”

_Wow. How very eloquent of him._

Fawley doesn’t blink and doesn’t look away.

“How are you doing, then?”

“A little better, I think. It’s not all fine, but I’m managing, I think. It’s not—it’s not completely overwhelming anymore.”

Fawley nods. “I’m glad.”

They look at each other for a moment, from all the way across the room.

Then, something in Fawley’s expression changes. “There you go. You’ve spat it out.”

Al huffs, but it’s almost a half-laugh. “Not to you. That’s easy.” It’s only now that he says it that he realises how true it is.

“I’m glad”, Fawley says, and something in his voice is different. It’s not his slightly amused one, and also not the serious one that doesn’t give a lot away and that he reserves for the scary conversations. It almost sounds a little emotional and something about that makes Al emotional, too.

He almost says, “Me too”, but then that seems like a little too much and he stays quiet.

“It’s Scorpius.”, he says instead, trying to shove down the something in his throat.

“Your blond friend?”

Al blinks. He forgot that Fawley knows his friends, that he actually met them, even if it’s been a while. They never come to Fawley’s flat, they meet up at their place or somewhere else entirely and Al views them as such different parts of his life that it’s weird to be reminded of a mix-up between the two.

At the same time, it’s funny that “blond” is the descriptor Fawley uses. Scorpius doesn’t usually get that as the first thing people think of, the same way people don’t really describe Al as the son of an international Quidditch star, even though he is.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Al hesitates, trying to sort his thoughts. “When I first, you know, realised about all of this, I figured I should talk about it—you know, with you and my friends and stuff.”

“A good idea.”

Al rubs his forehead. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, at first it was really hard, I’m sure you remember, but eventually I managed to say something to Rose and you and” and Cath, he guesses, but Fawley doesn’t know her, so he doesn’t say anything about that “talking about it got a little easier.”

Fawley nods and Al can see the thoughts flickering behind his eyes, working their ways even if Al can’t guess at their content.

“But as hard as I try, I just can’t talk to Scorpius about it. And it doesn’t even make any sense. I’ve known him forever, he’s my best friend. I tell him everything. Well, I used to, I guess. But now I can’t.”

Fawley raises a hand to his chin, making a thinking motion.

Al just keeps talking, his words growing frantic and frustrated. “And the worst part is, he’s not an idiot, he knows that something’s wrong and he’s worried and he’s just waiting for me to say something. And I’m almost sure he knows I’ve been talking to Rose, but she can’t talk to him about it unless I say something, so maybe he thinks it’s because he did something or maybe it’ll cause trouble between them and I just know that Rose hates keeping secrets from him, so I really should just say something already, but every time I try, I just—”

He breaks off and has to take a deep breath. He looks back to Fawley, who has his bushy old eyebrows crunched up.

“You just—“, Fawley prompts.

“I just freeze, I guess”, Al replies, his voice small and thin compared to the rant from before.

He can practically see Fawley thinking, but again, has no clue what it is that’s going around his head.

“What do you think will happen if you tell him?”

Al hasn’t considered this before, actually, which now seems kind of stupid. “I don’t—I’m not sure.”

He tries to picture it in his mind, the way he’d say it. _I haven’t been okay and I don’t exactly know why._ And then his imagination zooms in on the look on Scorpius’ face and draws up a blank.

_What would Scorpius say?_

“I really have no idea.” Al hesitates. “Scorpius is—he’s kind of intense, you know?”

Fawley raises an eyebrow. “Is that a bad thing?”

Al shakes his head. “No, of course not. I mean not most of the time. It’s just that I’m… …not, I guess.”

Fawley’s face does something very interesting, like he maybe doesn’t agree, but that doesn’t make any sense, so Al just lets it go.

“Is that a bad thing, then?”, Fawley asks.

“I don’t know—no, I suppose. But he’s always just out there, trying to make the world a better place and stuff, and you know, kind of running against the wall until the wall gives away.”

He doesn’t have to see Fawley’s face to know he chose the wrong analogy.

“No, not like—I don’t mean he’s an idiot or anything, just that he, well, he’s so stubborn he manages to do stuff no one else can just because he keeps trying.”

It’s something that Al has always admired about his friend but also, fundamentally, doesn’t get. He doesn’t get how it works, or how Scorpius even manages to do it at all. It’s not that it always works either, but it does sometimes. More often than it should, maybe.

“That sounds like a hard way to go through life.”

Al blinks. “Don’t you think it’s kind of inspiring?”

Fawley shrugs, in his very deliberate way that maybe undoes the effect that a shrug is supposed to have.

“Well, maybe, but it’s not very smart, is it?”

“He’s not stupid—“, Al says, feeling the defensiveness rise up in his chest, but Fawley dismisses him with a gesture.

“But I don’t mean that. I’m just saying that it seems like a sure-fire way to make your life very hard. You can only run against a wall so many times before you get a concussion.”

“It’s not—I shouldn’t have said it like that.” But Al gets what Fawley means. And he’s right. The memory of sixth year, sad and filled with fear, enters his head. Back then, Al really thought Scorpius might die from extreme head trauma or something, metaphorically speaking.

“So you don’t want him to run against your wall?”, Fawley asks, bringing Al back to the problem at hand.

Al shrugs. “I’m not even sure what the wall is in that scenario. It’s not like I have any real problems.”

“Just because you can’t see the wall doesn’t mean it’s not there.”

Al furrows his brows. “So it’s like an invisible wall or something?” That metaphor is clearly getting out of hand. What does that even mean now?

“Maybe it’s just hidden.”

“My wall is hidden—so that means Scorpius won’t be able to find it?”

Fawley throws his hands up in the air. “How am I supposed to know that? He’s your friend, not mine. I don’t know how good he is at finding walls.”

Al considers this. He thinks of Rose and the ministry and stupid time magic and plans for magical public transport. Scorpius is probably pretty damn good at finding walls. And he might enjoy it a little too much for comfort. He enjoys running head-first into them, so yeah.

“And”, Fawley says, “it’s your wall.”

Al nods. But he still has no clue what to do with that information.

* * *

That night, the _Nightowl_ is crazily busy. So busy, in fact, that Al doesn’t actually have enough time to gather what it is that’s going on that makes everyone drink so damn much. And drink they do.

Cath has another bartender upfront, helping her out, which is definitely a good thing. Al can’t imagine how she would handle the night on her own. However, Al is the only barback, which means he hasn’t really got a chance to catch a breath since he started his shift at midnight. He feels like he’s doing everything at once—picking up the dirty glasses, bringing out fresh ones, washing them, wiping the counters, restocking the bar, dragging in more booze from the back. His hands and feet are aching, but he doesn’t have much time to think about it. He doesn’t even really know how long it’s been—no time to look at the clock.

He keeps running in and out, replacing empty with full, dirty with clean, a lot with more. He’s walking back behind the bar, carefully carrying a fresh bowl full of ice, when he hears Cath shouting and freezes.

It’s not Cath shouting itself that is such a surprise. She works here and it’s a quite loud place, so sometimes there’s shouting involved. But what’s happening now aren’t bar calls or demands for more of anything. It’s not even screamed conversation with a customer. Well, it sort of is, it must be, but it’s not the normal kind.

Something in her voice is different. Al knows it because he’s heard it before—not a lot, but enough for it to make the alarms go off in his head.

The thing is, Cath is pretty and she’s young and she likes dark lipstick and she’s a bartender. That shouldn’t mean anything, but it does. As much as it absolutely sucks, she has her fair share of inappropriate encounters. It’s not usually that much of a problem—she knows how to handle herself and there are always the bouncers to throw anyone out who really doesn’t get the hint.

But Cath getting defensive can’t be a good thing.

Al dumps the ice on the counter, which is probably a bad idea, considering it’s ice and it needs to be cooled, but Al can’t bring himself to care right now. If there’s a situation happening there, that’s a lot more important, no matter how busy their night might be.

So he starts to walk up to Cath, who’s leaning over a section of the bar to—but it’s right in that moment when she turns around, looking at him, and no, he hasn’t misjudged the situation, her face is a mix of apprehension and defensiveness and she throws him a look that looks almost like a warning, which is a bit absurd considering she’s the one being harassed.

“Al!”, she yells against the music, “There’s this really shady guy who says he’s looking for you!”

_What?_

Okay, so maybe he _has_ completely misjudged the situation. What the hell is going on?

“I’m telling him to leave but he just won’t.”, Cath yells again and Al steps closer taking a look at the “shady guy” and _oh._

He can barely see the dubious look Cath throws him in the corners of his eye, because his eyes are fixed on the person in front of him—Scorpius.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter (even though it's a bit filler, but these things kinda need to happen, sorry).   
> As always, I'm excited to hear your thoughts! (Especially since I'm really not sure how well I'm pulling off the whole aspect of mental health here)


	11. it's alarming how quick you could forget (that nothing's bigger than love)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al gets terrible news and has two conversations, only one of which is successful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!  
> @WhenSheReads: I actually didn't quite know yet where this chapter was going to go when I answered your comment--I hope this will answer your questions a little bit.   
> @everyone: I hope you enjoy!

Yes, Scorpius, in all his glory, blond hair, wizarding robes and old-fashioned crutches inclusive.

He looks so out of place, Al just gapes at him for a moment as if he’s never seen him before.

“What the hell is going on here?” The words stumble out of Al’s mouth, almost without permission.

He locks eyes with Scorpius and finally he can see how frantic his friend looks, the way he’s leaning against his crutches and the bar, all tense and in alarm mode.

Al didn’t know there were any bells in his mind that weren’t going off already, but apparently there were, because they sure as hell are now.

“Do you want me to call security?”, Cath yells in his ear.

“Al!”, Scorpius says, and he isn’t yelling and maybe it’s the years of friendship or the bells in Al’s head, but he can still understand him perfectly. “You need to come to St. Mungo’s with me!”

Cath puts a hand on Al’s shoulder and he just shakes her head at her. “I know him!”, he yells at her and he doesn’t have time to parse her reaction, because St. Mungo’s is bad, it means something has happened.

“Are you okay?”, he yells, feeling Scorpius’ distress spilling over to him.

Scorpius makes a dismissive hand gesture. “I’m fine.”

“Rose?”, he asks, but that doesn’t make sense.

“She sent me!”, Scorpius replies, “She couldn’t get a hold of you, so I’m here to get you! It’s Fawley!”

And Al’s heart skips a beat as he feels the terror sink deep into him. No. No, nothing can happen to Fawley. If something happens to Fawley, he might just—he doesn’t know, what would he do without Fawley?

The panic must be visible in his face or something, because Cath’s grip on his shoulder tightens. Whatever she’s thinking, the pressure brings him back down from panic-country into reality-land.

Right. He needs to handle this.

“I need to go!”, he tells her, “It’s a family emergency!”

It’s not a lie, not really. Not in a way that matters.

Cath’s face changes completely.

“I need to” Al thinks frantically. “I need to talk to Monica, I need to tell her—”

“Of course”, Cath says.

Al looks around. The bar is still a shitshow, in the sense that there are like a million people whose chance to order is delayed by this whole thing.

“Get back to work”, he tells Cath and her face tells him that she doesn’t agree, but Al doesn’t have time for this.

“Wait a minute”, he tells Scorpius and bolts to find Monica in the office.

Monica obviously isn’t thrilled, but as far as managers go, she’s decent and of course she lets him go without too much of a fuss, getting behind the bar herself to help out Cath and Jared, who are still swamped.

Al doesn’t bother to change into his regular clothes and just rushes back to Scorpius.

“C’mon, let’s go!”

Making their way outside is an agonizingly slow and difficult task. Al is usually pretty good at accepting Scorpius’ pace, which isn’t always the same and sometimes it’s just harder for him to walk and he needs the crutches and especially with all the people around, but today Al frankly can’t wait for him. He pulls his arm under his friend’s shoulders and half-pulls, half-carries him out of there. It’s not the most gentle, and Al already knows he’ll feel guilty about this, but now—he’ll need to apologise later.

Scorpius doesn’t make a fuss about it. Once they’re outside, Al goes looking for a dark corner, an abandoned side-alley, maybe.

“Can you apparate us?”, he asks and out in the night his voice suddenly sounds so loud.

He knows this probably goes against like, one of the stupid transport regulations or whatever Scorpius always goes on about, or maybe secrecy or whatever, but—

Scorpius just nods and takes his arm and they’re being sucked through the familiar tight canal and then they are in the lobby of St. Mungo’s hospital.

Al forces himself to take a deep breath.

“What is it?”, he asks, because if he can go see Fawley—if he’s not in some kind of emergency treatment or asleep or in medical isolation or any of the other scary words Rose loves to learn about—when he goes to see Fawley, he needs to be calm and in control and do the right thing. In short, he needs to be able to be useful. He can’t be useful if he’s panicking and doesn’t know what’s going on. He needs to know what’s going on.

Scorpius gives him a shaky kind of smile, bordering on a lopsided grin. “Magical Exhaustion Syndrome.”

Al stares at him. A similarly shaky laughter bubbles up in his throat, too high and too hysterical. “Seriously?”

Scorpius is still perched on Al’s shoulder. He might be taller than Al, but he’s not a very heavy man. He sorts out his crutches and shifts to lean back on them.

“Yeah”, he says quietly, “They’re not completely sure, but—” He hesitates. “Rose thinks it’s true, in any case. I think she’d know.”

Al takes another breath, trying to get his own body and voice under control. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing, it doesn’t even make any sense, nothing about this is funny, I just—”

“Yeah”, Scorpius says, “I get it. It’s type B, though, so it’s not quite the same, but yeah.”

“That’s the one that comes with age, right?”, Al asks, for no real reason, because he knows this, he knows a ridiculous amount of stuff about this particular disease from long research sessions in the library and sitting next to a hospital bed, even if it wasn’t here, not in this hospital.

Scorpius nods. “Still hereditary, though.”

Al presses his eyes together, then opens them again. He knows that, too. There’s something about Scorpius saying it for him, though. It makes it real outside of his head.

“Okay”, Al says, not quite to Scorpius but also not just to himself, “Okay, we can do this. It’ll be fine.”

Scorpius opens his mouth to say something, but if he’ll be kind and encouraging, Al might just start to cry on the spot, so he doesn’t give him the chance.

“Can I see him?”

Scorpius nods. “They put him to sleep, but basically, yeah.”

Al nods. “Good. Sleep is good. Sleeping helps.”

Scorpius throws him a slightly pained look.

“I assume he had an episode, right? That’s what happened?”

“Yes”, Scorpius says as they start to move towards the elevator. “I don’t really know anything else, though. Rose just sent me a message to come get you because she couldn’t think of anything better. It’s not like an emergency owl can come and find you in that place.”

Al curses. He can’t be bothered to censor himself right now, even if the people in the hallways give him strange looks. They’re on the second floor now and Scorpius asks someone to find the right room.

There’s a healer at the door, eyeing them expectantly.

“Oh”, she says upon seeing Al, “Mr. Potter, you’re here. Good, we’ve been waiting for you. There’s a few papers we need you to take a look at.”

She ushers him inside and Al can only give Scorpius a confused look. Scorpius isn’t much bothered and just follows them into the room.

“You’re the emergency contact, mate”, he says, simply, answering Al’s questioning looks.

Al blinks. “I am?” He didn’t expect that. But then again, who else would be?

He doesn’t take time to ponder it, though, because he can see Fawley now, laying in the hospital bed, pale and tiny, even tinier than normally, and his eyes are closed because he’s asleep and _of course_ they are, but his face just feels empty without their spark.

Al is so scared, but it’s a fear he knows, and he knows he can’t let it consume him now. It’s just that he didn’t expect that fear, not now, not for Fawley. Funny how life goes like that. You think you know where your fears lie and then something happens to make you see how wrong you are. But maybe that’s the point. The terrible point of Al doesn’t even know what.

So he sits down on the chair and lets the healer explain it to him again.

* * *

There isn’t a lot to do, the first few hours, after he’s gotten all the information and signed all the papers. Fawley is asleep and Al stays.

Scorpius stays, too. Al thinks that, if he were a good friend, he’d tell him to go, to get his rest, because Al knows Scorpius needs it, but he doesn’t because he’s a little selfish like that.

It’s almost 5 am when Rose comes in, looking exhausted and quietly careful.

“Hey”, she whispers, eyes gliding from Al to Fawley in the bed to Scorpius. “Is it confirmed?”

Al nods and Scorpius answers. “Yeah.”

Rose just nods in turn. “How is it going?”

Al just shrugs, as if his shoulders can express the helplessness he feels. “You know how it is. For now, he just has to sleep.”

Rose sighs. “I know.”

Scorpius says nothing.

It’s not long before she has to leave again, her break is over, and she needs to do the last few rounds of the night shift before she can take off the medical robes and go home to bed. Al hopes she will.

He gives himself another hour of just staring and thinking and being trapped in this weird space, where he can think about the universe and how it isn’t fair and how is this happening to him, _again_.

Then, he tells himself to get it together. There’s no point in thinking like that and besides, it’s not fair either. No to Fawley, not to anyone. He’s had his wallowing, now he needs to get his act together.

Scorpius lets him be quiet until the morning. Then, when Al’s just coming back to himself, he goes to get him a coffee.

“Thanks”, Al says, his voice sounding strange and rusty. “You should probably go home with Rose, get some sleep.”

“You’re welcome.”, Scorpius says, completely ignoring the second part of what Al just said. He takes a deep breath.

Al can feel that something is coming, see the familiar shift of determination in the creases of Scorpius’ face.

 _It’s coming,_ something says in the recesses of Al’s mind, as if he’s been waiting for this without knowing it. He’s not sure if he’s panicking or calm, somehow it feels like it’s both at the same time.

“Listen, Al”, Scorpius starts, and his hand is gentle on Al’s shoulder and his face so familiar in the clinical light of the hospital.

 _Do we have to do this now?,_ Al thinks, somewhat desperately, but he doesn’t say it. He’s been avoiding talking to Scorpius and they both know it and maybe if he hadn’t, he would be able to open his mouth and ask for a _not now, I can’t deal with this now._ And maybe Scorpius would even let him get away with it. Maybe. Probably, even. But he can’t make himself say it, because if he does, neither of them might ever be brave enough to start to talk to each other again, not properly, and Al’s even less ready for that kind of reality.

“I know this is”, Scorpius pauses, just for a second and something flashes over his face, “hard for you to watch” Another pause. “again, but you need to—I need you to know that—You know that this is something that can’t be healed, right?”

Al blinks, because this isn’t what he expected, but irritation rises up in him faster than the confusion.

“Of course I know that! Merlin, do you really think I don’t remember?” The very idea offends Al. He didn’t think that Scorpius thought that way about him. “Besides, Healer Kennedy literally just told me again. How could I not know?”

Scorpius face is not angry or defensive, just very small and tired. “Of course you know, it’s just—there’s a difference between knowing something in your head and really _knowing_ it _._ ”

Al doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but there’s a different feeling rising up against his anger, something he can’t quite identify, but it gets stuck in his throat and hurts a little.

“What are you talking about?”

Scorpius sighs. “I—Al, you can’t push through this. I know that works for you, usually, but this time it won’t, and if you try it’ll just make everything worse. You’ll burn out, something will happen, I don’t know, but you can’t walk into this like it’s a fight you can win, it won’t go away. Or maybe it will, but only in the worst way possible. You don’t want that way and you won’t get any other, so you need to—”

He keeps talking faster and faster and Al can see how he’s working himself up, trying so hard and Al should probably say something, make him stop or just show a reaction, but somehow, he feels strangely removed from the whole situation. It’s almost like he’s only half there, with the rest of his mind floating around in some kind of alternate reality where none of this is happening.

He blinks again, and something catches on his eyelashes and Scorpius has stopped talking, maybe because he needs to see what Al is thinking, and he’s looking at his face now.

Al blinks again. The first tear reaches the edge of his jaw, tickling his skin, but Al can’t move to brush it away.

“I’m sorry”, says Scorpius, his voice hoarse and sad and a little bit desperate. He moves forward, maybe to touch Al’s face or something, but he doesn’t.

Al moves his head, just a tiny bit, side to side, but either Scorpius doesn’t see it or doesn’t understand it.

“I’m so sorry it is like that, I’m so sorry it has to be like this.”

Al shakes his head again, more determined this time.

“Oh Scorpius”, he says and he can finally talk again, really talk again, the way he hasn’t been able to these past weeks, when he’s been trying so hard and it makes his heart feel almost light in spite of the dire situation. It’s absurd, really.

Scorpius is still talking. “You can’t kill yourself doing this, though, and I’m scared you will if you aren’t careful—”

“I’ve been so stupid”, Al says, because now that he can talk again, it’s hard to keep himself from doing it even so long that Scorpius can finish his sentence, “I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid.”

Scorpius shuts up and looks at him, confused, then slightly concerned, as if he’s worried Al might be having a mental breakdown. He isn’t, though. _Already done that,_ he thinks to himself somewhat hysterically.

“I thought—all this time I haven’t been talking to you because I thought—”

He pauses, because the words are tumbling out his mouth faster than he can form them in his head, faster than he can string up the mess in his mind in a coherent way, even now that he finally understands it himself. Part of it, at least.

“Al”, Scorpius says, sounding pained, “you don’t have to do this now—”

“But I do”, Al says, because he does, because if he doesn’t, he might never do it. In fact, this is probably the perfect time to do it. If not the perfect time, then perhaps the only time.

“I’ve been stupid. I haven’t been talking to you because I thought that if I told you, you would try to fix me and, I didn’t want that—”

“Al”, Scorpius says, “Al, are you” He stops himself but Al can fill the blank anyway, with an “alright” or maybe an “okay”. ,

“I’m not alright”, Al says, “that’s kind of the point. I haven’t been, this whole time, and I don’t really know why and I just couldn’t talk about it to you because I kept thinking that you always run against the wall with your head first and then I would become your wall and I didn’t want to be the wall for you, because then you’d hurt your head—”

“Al”, Scorpius says again, “I can’t understand you.”

Al pauses and takes a deep breath. Then he starts talking again, more deliberate this time.

“I thought I couldn’t talk to you about my issues, because I somehow believed you wouldn’t understand that there are problems that you can’t just get over if you try hard enough. I thought that if I told you, I might become your project to fix and I didn’t want that.” He pauses for a tiny minute. “And I’m not alright and I don’t know why. Did I say that already?”

“I mean”, Scorpius says, and his eyebrows are creasing together, “I know, but Al, you must know that I would never do that.”

“I know”, Al says, “That’s why I’ve been so stupid. Of course you wouldn’t. You get that more than literally anyone else in the world, probably. I don’t know how I didn’t see that. Merlin, I mean, really, how long have you had walking aids? I guess I forgot about it somehow.”

Scorpius lets out a sharp breath, pained as much as exasperated and relieved and something else entirely. “Don’t just forget about this kind of stuff, Al.”, he says, but there’s no blame in his voice, at least Al can’t hear it, for once, even though he’s been hearing it everywhere lately, most of all in his own head.

“That’s kind of the thing that happens, though”, Al says, because now that it’s coming out, everything is coming out, “I forget about everyone else, the good things and the bad things and everything, really, because I get so wrapped up with myself and I don’t really know why, I just get—I think I might just get to busy with the effort of existing at all.”

The statement hangs with them in the room for a moment, feeling almost too serious for Al to have said it at all. But it’s not untrue, and it’s the best way he’s expressed this mess to date. He doesn’t really know how else to say it, even if it feels a little too much, a little like he’s exaggerating his non-problems.

“I”, Scorpius says and he’s gripping on Al’s shoulder now, “Okay.”

There’s something in his breath and in his voice and Al almost doesn’t want to look at him. He feels too vulnerable, now that it is out, but at the same time, he craves the closeness and comfort that is his best friend. He feels weird and torn and all in all, it’s just a little bit too much the same way a lot of things have been too much lately. But he can’t escape this, and he knows it and, well, that almost makes it easier. Almost.

“Okay.”, Scorpius says again. “You know that I—you know you’re my best friend.”

It’s a question, but he doesn’t say it like one.

Something about it makes something in Al’s heart ache, something that he somehow hasn’t noticed before, but now that it has made its way into his conscience, it feels like an old wound that’s been bleeding silently all this time.

The thing is, of course he knows. He knows because Scorpius decided that, back when they were tiny, snot-faced eleven-year-olds and second-hand famous in very different ways and still somehow the same brand of weird nerds. And Al knows Scorpius well enough to know that he’ll never change that decision, he’ll forever think of Al as his Best Friend, and that’s what makes him that, isn’t it?

But, at the same time, isn’t a best friend just that? The best friend someone has? Al knows he hasn’t been a good friend lately. Not to Scorpius, but also more broadly, not to anyone, really. So maybe he’s Scorpius’ Best Friend, but is he his best friend? It couldn’t be all that hard for him to find a better one.

“I try.”, Al says, and it sounds like a joke, but it’s a promise. He’ll try.

“I know”, Scorpius says, and Al knows that he isn’t taking it as a joke either. But Scorpius also doesn’t live in vague futures the same way Al does. “I’m rooting for you.”

His grip loosens a little and Al finally manages to look up again. Scorpius’ eyes are misty like his are, but unabashedly honest and there is some strength there that Al can never see in himself, especially not when he’s on the brink of crying.

“And you know I’ll always be here for you—”

Al nods, because, somehow, that part has never been in doubt, but Scorpius isn’t done talking yet.

“—even though I’m like this.”

Al frowns. “What do you mean?”

Scorpius gestures vaguely at the crutches leaning next to his chair and then at his own body. “You know. Sick. A Workaholic. A bit removed from reality and stuff.”

His cheeks colour a bit as if it’s an embarrassing thing. Al can only stare.

“But those are all the best things about you!”

Scorpius looks dazed.

“I mean”, Al backtracks, “I guess not the being sick part, but that’s hardly your fault. Besides, it doesn’t really change anything.”

“Doesn’t it?” Scorpius sounds pained again, as if he’s dreading the answer.

“Well, not for being friends it doesn’t.” Al pauses for a moment, wonders if that statement in itself might be incredibly insensitive. “I mean, of course it’s important for your life and stuff, but I never thought it’d keep you from being there for me. That doesn’t even make any sense.”

Scorpius shrugs, in the way that tells Al that this definitely matters. “Well”, he says, “good.”

They sit there in silence for a moment.

Then suddenly, and for no reason at all, except that they have already cycled through so many emotions tonight, worry and fear and sadness and self-deprecation, Al starts to laugh.

Scorpius looks at him for a second, surprise and confusion etched across his face. But then the tension in his face crumbles and he starts laughing, too.

That’s how Rose finds them a couple minutes later when she comes into the room: laughing so hard they’re almost crying.

She blinks at them and it almost wipes away the exhaustion in her eyes after the night shift. Another night Al would sympathise, he has experience with working all night, even if her job is probably a lot harder than his, and his sleep schedule is messed up anyway.

“What in Merlin’s name is going on here?”, she asks.

Al struggles to catch his breath long enough to answer her. “We—just realised that—” Another fit of laughter bubbles out of him and he can’t finish, but that’s okay because Scorpius does it for him.

“we’re both—really—bloody—stupid.”

Rose huffs, but doesn’t ask for clarification. Maybe she just gets it. She’s always been the smartest out of the three of them. Instead she walks over to stand in between where the two of them are sitting and gives them a light hit on the back of their heads.

“Could have told you that a long time ago.”

* * *

They stay there for a little while, the three of them, but eventually Al has to leave the bubble that is the support of his best friends in the world and needs to face the real world again. Well, no, not exactly, he doesn’t really leave the support behind. He knows that, for now, and for now he’s confident that they’ll remind him again when he forgets.

But reality is still as it is, even with the support and Fawley is sick and maybe his world is shaking a bit, so now Al has to go and deal with it.

Rose helps him look up the _Nightowl’_ s phone number and Al calls from a phone booth outside St. Mungo’s to tell them that he won’t be able to come in for the next few days because of a serious family emergency. It feels like even less of a lie now.

Then he goes back to the flat, showers off the stench of alcohol that’s still sticking to his skin. Then he throws a few of his hoodies and jeans into a backpack, along with his toothbrush and another few bare necessities. After a bit of consideration, he also adds a few of Fawley’s clothes. Sure, the old man is supposed to just wear the hospital gown, but still. He’ll want something else when he wakes up. Al adds a few of Fawley’s favourite teabags and some of his books on Italian and nutrition that he hasn’t finished.

Then, he heads back to St. Mungo’s.

Sure, he might not be supposed to just stay there until Fawley wakes up again, but what are they going to do? Throw him out?

 _Well,_ Al thinks, _they can try._

And so he stays.

It’s almost peaceful, staying there by his bedside. Fawley doesn’t wake up on the first day, and while Al can feel the anxious energy building up within him, he already knew it would be like this. He didn’t expect anything different.

He can tell himself that sleep is good, that even if it can’t heal, it can help restore. He can tell himself that as long as he’s there, nothing can happen to Fawley. Not for now. He can keep himself calm.

He spends most of his time reading and waiting, but he takes care that he gets at least somewhat enough food and water. It almost seems more important now—if Fawley is sick, then Al can’t afford to make himself weak just by being stupid.

Rose stops in whenever she can on her breaks, and Scorpius, too, makes an effort to visit Al a few times and keep him company.

But even when they aren’t there, Al can feel them there with him, the same way he had all the years in Hogwarts. He didn’t even realise when he lost that—the feeling, not the fact, because he’s had that all along, even when he forgot about it.

As far as taking care of himself goes, sleeping enough is the hardest. That’s hardly surprising, sleep has always been hard for Al, but now it’s even harder, because he refuses to go back home to the flat for it. It’s stupid really, but for some reason he feels like if he does, something might go wrong. There’s no real basis for this, of course—in all likelihood Fawley will just wake up in a few days either way, but still. And so Al just sleeps there at his bedside during the day, when his exhaustion makes him pass out on the chair at Fawley’s bedside.

As day two comes to an end, Healer Marriott offers to make up a tiny bed somewhere for him for the night, but Al refuses—he’s sure that can be used better. Besides, it’s not like he can sleep at night anyway—especially not now when he knows that this is the time the least people are watching over Fawley. Not that he’s getting bad medical care, it’s just—it’s just how he feels.

On the third day, Fawley gets surprising visitors. Which is to say, they aren’t really Fawley’s visitors as much as they are Al’s which is kind of stupid considering Fawley’s the one who’s in hospital.

It’s just after noon and Al’s gotten up for a bit to find something to eat and drink. He’s gotten in a few hours of sleep and now that the afternoon is approaching, he’s starting to feel a little more awake. The healers are saying that Fawley’s magical energy levels have been going up immensely, which makes the itch under Al’s skin grow. It’s only a matter of time now. Maybe only a matter of hours.

He doesn’t expect his parents to show up at St. Mungo’s.

Maybe he should have. It’s Sunday, after all, the day he usually goes to visit them, but that’s under normal circumstances. He hasn’t even thought about it now, to be perfectly honest. Then on the other hand, he doesn’t even know how they know he’s here.

But there they are, Harry and Ginny Potter in Fawley’s hospital room.

Fawley has a private room, all in the magical diseases ward are, because a lot of the illnesses are contagious. Magical Exhaustion Syndrome isn’t, of course, but Fawley still gets to sleep in a room on his own. Well, with Al, Al supposes. And only as long as there’s no shortage of beds.

Right now, Al is thankful for that, because that means he can at least spare himself the usual audience that seems to be wherever his father goes. That’s something. He still doesn’t feel like he has the energy for this conversation.

 _Well,_ he thinks to himself as he braces his shoulders, _tough luck._ It looks like he isn’t exactly getting a choice on that matter.

“Hi mum, dad”, he says and resists the temptation to ask what they’re doing here. “It’s really nice of you to come visit.”

He’s making an effort. He really is. Sometimes it helps to make an effort.

His father smiles at him a bit crookedly as his mother comes up to hug and kiss him. Al lets her, then goes to hug his father.

It makes him feel guilty about how much he doesn’t want to talk to them. He loves his parents. It’s just—it’s all been so complicated lately.

“Rose told us about what happened”, his mum says and well, that’s one thing explained at least. Al kind of wants to be annoyed at Rose for it, but there’s really no reason. In all honesty, he probably should have told his parents himself.

“Yeah”, Al says, “Magical Exhaustion Syndrome.”

The words hang between them in a similar way they did between Al and Scorpius when Scorpius told Al when they came in.

“Apparently it’s a lot more common among old wizards. Purebloods especially.”

He can see his father nod.

“But he’ll wake up again soon. Probably today or tomorrow at the latest.”

Al suddenly notices that he keeps talking, saying all the things that he’s been told, as if it makes them any more real. Or less real perhaps. More manageable.

Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to talk about other things.

His parents are still just looking at him.

Al looks back, but now that he’s running out of things to say, it’s getting harder and harder.

“Oh, Al”, his mother says and he almost chokes on the pity he hears in her voice. He’s done with that. He’s gone through it in a single night and now he doesn’t have time for it. Or the energy. He can’t feel sorry for himself and enforcing that is a whole lot easier if no one else is doing it, either.

This—this is just making it all harder. He doesn’t want that.

“It’ll be fine.”, Al says, “He’ll wake up soon. We’ll have to be careful, after, but we’ll be fine. We can manage. I know how this works.”

It’s true and it’s not even unreasonable. It’s good thinking, it’s positive thinking, but he can still see the crease in his father’s eyebrows tighten, the way the shape of the scar on his forehead changes slightly.

“Al”, his father says, and Al already knows he doesn’t want to hear it, “it’s very kind of you to be here for Mr. Fawley, but it’s important that you know that this isn’t your responsibility.”

It is though. And Al knows that it’s the wrong thing to say, especially if he wants to convince them, but he can’t help himself.

“It is.”

His father’s eyes soften and his mother comes up to him to hold his hand. Al has half a mind to just shake her off, but in the end he can’t bring himself to do it.

“Well”, she says, “it shouldn’t be.”

But they don’t get it. It’s his responsibility, sure, but not because someone burdening him with it. He chose it for himself. He chose it for himself by caring. He’s in now, and he’s not getting out. But he doesn’t know how to explain that.

“It’s not—I just care.”

There’s no room for argument there and Al doesn’t want to watch them forcibly make some, even if they only have the best intentions, so he scrambles to changes the subject as fast as possible.

“Have you heard anything from Lily lately? I sent her a letter via the Muggle post, but I’m not sure how well that works.”

His mother’s face drops, but his father answers before she can say anything.

“Not directly, but James sent her love. She’s trying to live completely like a muggle, so no owls.”

“I figured”, Al says, before his mum can get a word in, “Have you been sending her letters?”

“Yeah, but it takes much longer.”

Al nods. So at least it’s not that she’s just ignoring him. He misses her. The thing about Lily is, she’s usually too wrapped up in new discoveries and exciting knowledge that she doesn’t care too much for social conventions and talking about feelings. It’s not perfect, but it does make things easier sometimes.

Like in this conversation, he could just avoid the whole “Al, what are you doing with your life, why do you spend your youth running errands for an old eccentric instead of doing something useful”-conversation by just going “So what do you think about the ethics of animal transfiguration?”. And then they’d be having that conversation, and everything would be a whole lot easier.

Even though she does hold grudges.

“Isn’t it great when people live their dreams.”, Al says, with barely any inflection at all, so it comes out quite passive-aggressively. He doesn’t really know what kind of passive-aggressive message he’s sending precisely, but the aggression is definitely there. Passively.

It doesn’t escape his parents’ notice.

“Al”, his mum says and she’s still holding his hand and Al kind of wants to pull it away because he’s so done with this conversation and he can’t think of more stuff to put it off or distract from it. “You know you can still always change things?”

Well, at least that’s less direct than he expected.

“I know.”, Al says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, which, maybe it isn’t, because he didn’t know how to start anything resembling a decent career two years ago and frankly, he hasn’t learned much, but that doesn’t have anything to do with it being too late. He really doesn’t know that he can change things because honestly, he doesn’t know how. Usually things just change without his contribution or consent. He just has to go and make the best of it.

He won’t say that, though, because he doesn’t fancy people telling him that his best is pretty crappy, even if he does think so himself often enough. Sure, he isn’t very impressive as a person, but that doesn’t mean his life sucks. He’s made this bed himself and he won’t be talked out of sleeping in it.

Rationally, he knows that people are just worried and want the best for him, but all that talk about how he can still do better things just rubs him the wrong way. It’s like they know his life better than he does, like they know what’s wrong about it and what isn’t.

Well, this shows what they know. Fawley is a good person. And he’s proven to be a good decision for Al in so many ways, even if his parents don’t get it.

“I know, mum”, he says, “I know it’s not too late to change things, but I don’t want to change things. I know what I’m doing.”

So that’s a blatant lie. Al follows all his stupid impulses and sometimes they turn out well for him. That doesn’t really qualify as knowing what you’re doing. Still seems like the best way to end this line of conversation.

And if lying to his parents makes his skin crawl, well, then trying to justify something about himself that he doesn’t even understand in his own mind is even worse.

“Can we talk about something else?”

And so they do. It doesn’t stop Al from feeling bad about it, though.

* * *

His parents leave after a while and a bit of conversation that’s a little more pleasant. Al still feels tense all the way through and even when they’re gone that tension doesn’t dissipate.

Instead, he’s left to question the universe and himself in the silent company of a sleeping man and the occasional hospital noises from the corridor.

Al doesn’t like it. Doesn’t like the hospital, doesn’t like that Fawley’s sick, doesn’t like sitting there and questioning himself. And the universe.

It’s just—this thing shouldn’t be about him. Why is this about him? It’s Fawley who’s sick, it’s Fawley who has a condition that will follow him the rest of his life. Something about that thought sends a chill down his spine, so he just moves on.

The point is—this should be about Fawley. It is about Fawley.

So why is it that Al’s friends and family are gathering around like he’s the one who needs care and comfort and compassion?

And now he has to sit here and think about his life.

Al doesn’t like thinking about those kinds of things. Questioning himself and the world, constantly—it’s just so tiring. And he’s already done a lot of that lately, what with talking about his issues and figuring out the levels of his okay-ness. It’s been, well, it’s been a lot. And sure, it has been good for him, probably still is, but, well.

Al needs it to be enough. And if it were up to him, he just wouldn’t. He could just do his thing, live his life, take it one day after the other. He’s alright at that. He’s managed that before. He can do this and keep his peace of mind for the most part. And right now, that’s kind of what he needs. He needs to keep his peace of mind.

But it’s kind of hard to stop the questioning when everyone else can’t seem to ever stop asking. It’s not even that Al doesn’t like questions—he’s a Ravenclaw, he likes knowing things and he even like to ponder things that don’t exactly have an answer—it’s just about himself, or his purpose, or what the point of his life is—it’s just—it’s not worth it. It’s not worth the headache. Al doesn’t want the headache. Everyone else seems to want him to have the headache.

It’s not the time for the headache.

It’s not really the time for Italian culinary phrases, either, but that’s still what Al tries to study. It’s a bit of a distraction, but it doesn’t work very well. His mind drifts of just about every five seconds.

He starts saying them out loud, to tie himself to the thoughts, to push his mind further on the stupid textbook. Also a little bit to practise his pronunciation.

He’s at the tenth different kind of pasta, none of which he can really tell apart, when there is a small noise.

He looks up and back at Fawley, still motionless and small in his bed, but there’s something different about his breathing and his lids are fluttering and yes!

He’s waking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited to know what you thought of this chapter, I'm actually mostly satisfied with this one. Can't wait to hear your thoughts!  
> Thanks for reading!


	12. it messed me up (need a second to breathe)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al goes through an indeterminate amount of stages of processing. Also, lots of talks about modern communication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brace yourselves, there is a lot of dialogue in this.

One of the first things Al does after they go back home is to report back to duty at the _Nightowl._

It’s not really one of the first things. The first things are making extremely healthy food and freaking out about the safety hazard that is the flat, what with all the easels and paint and canvasses just standing around randomly.

But it’s one of the first things he does after Fawley tells him to chill out.

Al doesn’t exactly chill out, can’t really, but he will try to tone it down a bit. Worrying too much won’t help anybody, even if he fears that Fawley will have another attack as soon as he turns his back. Sure, that’s not very likely to happen so soon after the first one, but still.

He’ll just have to make sure that Fawley doesn’t exhaust himself too much. And maybe try to accident-proof the flat a little bit.

It makes him a little crazy, but he can’t think of anything else that can even still be done. It’s endlessly frustrating. And scary. It’s very scary, but Al tries not to think about that part.

He fails miserably.

The evening shift is just about to start when he walks into the _Nightowl._ He could have called beforehand, it’s probably the normal thing to do, but Al simply couldn’t be bothered. It’s just way more effort than simply going there and telling Monica in person.

He hopes she isn’t too bothered by his impromptu disappearance—and over the weekend, too, when it was really busy. Sure, she’s great as far as managers go, but that doesn’t mean she’ll be able to overlook this. It would really suck if he was fired.

But in the end, he knows that even if he knew for sure that he’d be thrown out, he would still have abandoned his shift to go to the hospital. It was just the right thing to do. He’ll live with the consequences. He’d just rather not if he doesn’t have to. 

He swings open the side door, about to pass the back room to go up to the tiny office, when Cath comes out the door.

“Al!”, she says, smiling, “You’re back!”

Al smiles back tentatively. He’s about to say something like “I hope I am”, but right this second, her smile drops.

“Is your grandfather okay? He had to go to hospital, right?”

Al almost winces at the words. Fawley isn’t really his grandfather, even if he’s… …somebody. Calling him that feels a tiny bit disrespectful to Grandpa Arthur and well, even more so to Al’s father’s father, even if Al’s never met him. Al knows that his father still visits his parents on the cemetery all the time.

No, calling Fawley his grandfather is wrong, but at the same time, Al doesn’t exactly feel like explaining their exact relationship to Cath. It’s too complicated and besides, it’s not really her business, is it?

“It’s a bit more of a—a long-term problem.”, Al says, “for” He hesitates. “For Alistair.”

The name feels foreign in his head. He rarely addresses Fawley to his face and he just calls him Fawley in his head, or when he talks to other people. It’s even weirder because Al knows that Fawley himself doesn’t actually call himself Alistair—he calls himself Al, but Al can’t exactly do that without confusing himself immensely.

But while he’s still thinking about the whole name-mess, something in Cath’s face changes.

“Oh.”, she says, “I’m so sorry. That’s really hard.”

She says it with so much compassion and sympathy, Al can’t help but shuffle on his feet uncomfortably. It’s not quite the same feeling he’s had with his parents or even Scorpius and Rose, though he doesn’t really know why. He’s not annoyed at her for thinking about his feelings over Fawley’s health, she doesn’t even know him, or anything about him. It’s just that he feels like she’s looking at him a little too closely, understanding a bit too much.

“Yeah, well”, he says awkwardly, “it’ll probably be fine for now. I mean, it won’t get too bad for a while.”

Her lips press together, then do a complicated motion that could be a smile but doesn’t quite make it. “Still.”

Al only nods. It’s not like there’s anything to say to that. Or at all, really.

But now the hallway is silent and uncomfortable, and Al can deal with that even less, so he tries to crack a joke.

“Well, I’ll be fine so long Monica doesn’t fire me for abandoning you the whole weekend.”

Even as he says it, he can hear the humour of it falling flat. It’s not that he thinks that Monica will actually fire him—she won’t. Probably. It’s just that all of this is so damn sad, he can’t even muster up the lightness needed for a proper joke. Instead, it all just sounds grim.

“She wouldn’t!”, Cath calls out with a conviction that surprises Al, so he just shrugs.

“Well, I mean, I did call in to say it would be a few days. I still have to go up to talk to her properly, though, so we’ll see how that goes.”

“It’ll go fine”, Cath says, “And if it doesn’t, she’ll have to answer to me.”

The suggestion is frankly a bit ridiculous, considering that Cath is only maybe a year or two older than Al and just barely higher-ranked in the professional hierarchy of this place, while Monica controls pretty much everything, but the sentiment still does something to warm Al’s heart.

And he still feels to raw and bad to laugh properly, so he just says “Thanks” in what is probably a too quiet voice and Merlin, he’s having a sappy day, isn’t he?

“I’ll get to it, then”, he says, to diffuse the weird tension. They pass each other in the narrow hallway and Cath bumps Al’s shoulder with his in a gesture of what probably is supposed to be encouragement.

“You go get to that”, she says, and Al is surprised to discover that the encouragement, that awkward shoulder-bump, it actually seems to work for once.

Monica is in the office when Al comes in, which is lucky, because even though her life seems to be pretty much dedicated to this place, she too, is only one person, and needs to sleep every once in a while, even if the _Nightowl_ stays open twenty-four/seven. She is a bit of a night owl herself though, so the evening shift isn’t the worst time to catch her.

She looks up when Al comes in.

“So”, Al says, still feeling awkward and dazed and exhausted from the past few days, “I’m ready to go back to work. If you can still find a use for me.”

Monica frowns.

“Good, you can go down to help Cath right now. She’ll be glad to have you back.”

“Oh, uh, yes.”

“I just need you to fill out this form for your leave—family emergency, wasn’t it?”

Al nods. “It was, yeah. I needed to—I needed to be there for a bit.”

Monica pushes a piece of paper across her desk towards him, and throws him a sympathetic look.

“No one else to look after those kinds of things?”

Al swallows, but there’s not really anything to say but the truth. “Not really.”

She sighs. “It’s all the good kids, isn’t it?”

Al doesn’t quite know what she means by that, but he doesn’t want to ask.

“It isn’t going to be a problem?”, Al asks, then curses himself a little, because it had looked like she’d let him off the hook and what if he’s just giving her ideas now?

She sighs again.

“Are you going to miss a lot more work because of this?”

Al bites his lip. “I-uh, probably not. I mean, I don’t think so. I mean maybe there’ll be another incident at some point but—not soon”, he concludes, quickly shutting himself up. He’s probably reached the point of too much honesty.

“Okay then. You work efficiently, you’re reliable, you already have the training, you like to do hours that are hard to find people for and you do well with the rest of the team, so I’d really like to keep you on.” She sighs. “Besides, I’d rather not make your life any harder if I can help it. So unless you suddenly start skipping out all the time now, it’s fine.”

Al nods. “Yeah, I mean, of course I won’t. Thank you.”

She just nods back at him, then hides her face behind one of her hands to yawn. “You’re welcome. I do try to look out for you guys a little.”

Al nods again. He doesn’t really know what to say to that whole exchange. Maybe that’ll become a new theme in his life—Al, who doesn’t know what to say.

“I’ll get to work, then.”

* * *

It’s a slow night, as most Tuesday nights are. Al can find some comfort in the motion of the work that’s so familiar to him by now. Mostly though, he’s just tired. Point blank exhausted from the effort of the past few days, both physical and emotional. It’s just been so much, and he’s just starting to process what it all means.

He kind of wishes it wasn’t quite such a slow night. If it was a little bit busier, that would give him less time to think about how much he wants to be asleep.

Cath doesn’t seem to be in too much of a chatty mood either, which is fine by Al. He’s had way too many uncomfortable conversations in the past few days, not least of which the one with his parents yesterday. He flinches at the memory. He used to get along so well with them. He used to—well, he didn’t use to be the problem child. If anything, he was the anti-problem child. He always did his work, never gave them any trouble, he didn’t have a crazy rebellious phase, never started any crazy magical experiments and always ate his stupid greens.

His issues always kind of faded away a bit compared to all the craziness going on around him. Sure, Lily has always been a genius and never exactly a bad kid, but she does tend to impulsive decisions and bouts of stubbornness that Al never really got.

And James, well. He was a trouble-maker if there ever was one. Not even for any reason that Al could discern, though. It wasn’t really bad stuff either, just school rules and ridiculous pranks. As far as Al can tell, it was more or less for the trouble himself or at least for the discussion around it. It didn’t really make any sense to Al at the time and it still doesn’t now, but he’s never really gotten James, so that’s not very surprising.

Thing is, all of that has sorted itself out over the years. James is fine. Brilliant even, with his meteor career in the US. Lily will be fine, too. She knows what she wants and she’s smart enough to get it. But Al’s just still here, floating around, holding himself together with the duct tape that are nutritional guides and self-imposed forced social interaction.

Meaning he’s the one left to worry about.

It’s not that he doesn’t get it. He does, he too can see the drastic difference between his siblings’ and even his friends’ lives and his own, he’s not stupid. He just wishes they’d leave him alone about it. He’s already doing his best. He knows that his best isn’t exactly great, but well. That doesn’t mean he needs to be reminded all the time.

“How are you doing over there?”, Cath asks, talking to him after all at last, and Al realises he’s been staring at the same spot of counter for at least five minutes.

He shakes his head to root himself back to the present. “Just contemplating my personal failings so I don’t have to think about big scary things no one can change.”

The answer is out before he can stop it. Al’s filter slowly starts to erode when he’s tired. He’s pretty sure that’s what’s happening here, but he can’t bring himself to care about it too much. What he’s saying is only true, after all.

Sure, his parents being disappointed in his lack of ambitions and true goals in life is sad and uncomfortable, but not exactly anything new. Al can deal with that. It’s just been getting more apparent over the years. But it’s not the thing he’s really upset about. It’s just easier to linger on an old, familiar upset than a scary new one he doesn’t have any influence over.

He’s more surprised by the clarity and the ease with that he can admit that. It’s something about Cath, he decides. She’s conditioned him, or something, with her somewhat invasive questions always right when he’s most susceptible to actually answering them. He doesn’t really know how she does that.

Cath pulls a face. “Not the most efficient way to deal with things, trust me.”

“I’m not a very efficient person”, Al says.

“If you say so.”

They’re quiet for a moment.

Al can’t suppress a yawn. “I’m tired as hell. I’ve been staying up too much—can’t exactly sleep with all of that stuff going on.”

Cath nods and her voice goes sad and soft. “Yeah, that’s really hard.” She hesitates. “Do you want to, like, talk about it?”

Al shakes his head. “I’m not sure if I actually can.” Because of magical secrecy and all that, but that isn’t what Al means. Even if Cath knew all about wizards, he doesn’t think he could talk about it right now. He’s so damn tired and he has barely had the time to figure out what he thinks about the whole thing himself. It’s like he’s been living in this parallel world of St. Mungo’s and has just exited it and now he’s only just getting started at discovering its repercussions in real life. He doesn’t quite know how it all goes together yet—Fawley and Magical Exhaustion Syndrome and reality.

To his immense relief, Cath leaves the topic there, just lets out an empathetic noise and moves on to the next thing.

“I packed your stuff for you.”

Al blinks and has to resist the temptation to just leave his eyes closed. “What do you mean?”

“From the other night? You left pretty suddenly with—that guy, and your stuff is still here.”

Right, the clothes he’d came in before he changed into the work uniform. And his bag, he supposes.

“I completely forgot about that.”

Al frowns as he tries to figure out if there was anything incriminating in there. He doesn’t think so, but the cloud of exhaustion in his head makes it hard to remember. He’s careful when he goes out in the muggle word, usually, making sure the things he carries on his body can’t reveal him. He never takes his wand to work, for example, which is a good thing, because it would be pretty much the worst thing for Cath to find with his stuff.

“Well”, Cath says, “I just figured you wouldn’t want all of your things lying around like that.”

She’s not wrong, in the sense that now, in the worst-case scenario, the damage is contained to one person. Still, Al would really prefer it if he didn’t have to sick the ministry on Cath to erase her memories. That would suck. Also, it would be a really embarrassing letter to write and Al’s not sure if he has the mental strength for that right now.

“Thank you”, Al says, feeling a bit weary.

“Yeah”, she says, suddenly blushing a little, “no problem. You have a really cool watch, you know?”

Al flinches. His pocket watch. Yeah, that one is probably a bit weird.

“It’s a family heirloom”, he says, trying to keep his tone normal and not like he has tons of stuff to hide.

Was talking to Cath always this hard, a minefield of questions he can’t answer because they’re confidential in a way he just can’t let a muggle see? He doesn’t think so, but he doesn’t really know what could have changed to cause the need to constantly talk around in circles. It’s bloody annoying. On the other hand, he has just established that she, for some reason, makes him talk more than he would usually prefer. That’s probably it.

“Cool”, Cath says, “I like the planets.”

Al flinches again, involuntarily. “Yeah, they’re pretty.” They’re also useful if you like astronomy. He tries to cover the jerking motion up by wiping another piece of counter for the millionth time.

But Cath saw it. She blushes even harder. “I swear I wasn’t trying to snoop; it just fell out of your pocket!”

“It’s fine”, Al says, “it’s just a weird watch my dad gave me. I carry it around for sentimentality.”

Cath lets out a tiny huff at that, even though her cheeks are still red. “I always knew you were a sap on the inside.”

Al shrugs. He doesn’t have the energy to deny that and he isn’t sure if a claim to the contrary would even make any sense.

“And you are a snoop”, he says anyway, just to be a little mean, because she’s so defensive about it, there’s no way she wasn’t at least the tiniest bit curious when picking up his stuff.

He should probably be mad about that, or concerned at the very least, but he can’t really bring himself to. It seems a bit like a waste of energy.

“I’m not!”, Cath says, almost a little too loud. It sounds funny, because most nights it’s too loud to even have a conversation without screaming, but not today. Maybe they don’t bother to make the music that loud when it’s obvious that people aren’t going to be dancing.

The only people who come in on Tuesdays are regulars. That, and people getting drunk after a bad break-up, at least that’s Al’s experience. It doesn’t get full enough to make most people comfortable with the dance floor and those who aren’t deterred by that, don’t mind when the music isn’t extremely loud, either. During the week, the _Nightowl_ feels a lot more like a proper bar than the weird mix between bar, club, and café it advertises itself to be.

“Whatever”, Al says, because he doesn’t actually feel threatened by the way she asks him questions. It doesn’t feel like she wants to air his secrets or even just trivialise his life by making it the subject of idle gossip. He can’t quite put the finger on what it is that makes it different, but thinking about it just makes his head hurt, so he does what he does best—he just lays it aside, for now.

Cath actually might be embarrassed, because she doesn’t say anything else, and pretends to be busy with something, but she keeps throwing little glances into his direction out of the corner of her eye.

Al yawns again, barely even bothering to hide it. It’s not like anyone’s there to complain about it.

He sees Cath looking again, and this time he looks back to hold her gaze.

“C’mon”, he says, resigning himself to his fate, “Go on. Ask.”

Cath’s cheeks colour again, but she looks right back at him this time. She’s looking different again, Al notices, back with the dark lipstick and the hair neatly up. Pretty much the same as when he first met her. He hopes she’s doing alright.

“Ask what?”, Cath says.

Al shrugs. “What you want to know, I guess.” The thought of how easily this could go wrong breaches his brain for about two seconds, before the tired fog eats it. “I’m going to fall asleep right here on this counter if I don’t have some kind of distraction. So I figure e might as well talk.”

She raises a single eyebrow. “You’re gonna lose all of your mysterious cred.”

Al huffs. “Well, I reckon I can just not answer when I feel like I’m in any danger of that.”

Cath gives him a look, not an annoyed one, it’s too light for that, but it’s not quite amused either. It looks like she can sense that she’s supposed to be, amused that is, but can’t quite figure out the joke. Al can’t really help here, there. He’s not in on it either. He doesn’t even know where the joke is.

“You’re so weird”, she says, eventually.

Al shrugs. He doesn’t care, right now. He’s not sure if he will, later. He’s an outsider to this world, of course Cath would consider him weird. But really, he knows this isn’t the only place where he is. Weird. An outsider.

But right now, he doesn’t care, so he just lets his shoulders fall and says things he might not otherwise. “You don’t mind. You’d be bored if I wasn’t.”

She grins. “Maybe.”

There’s a small pause and Al think she might not ask any questions after all, but before he’s finished the thought, she starts.

“That picture”, she says, “did you draw that?”

It takes Al a moment to cycle through what she might mean, a moment before he remembers the portrait sketch of Felina tugged into his pocket. He’s left it here with his trousers and his clock and Lucy’s letter, of course, but somehow he managed to completely forget about it for a moment or two.

“Oh, that”, he says, somewhat belatedly, “Yeah.”

He knows it’s not very impressive—especially not in the non-magical, watered-down version Cath has seen. Al isn’t reckless enough to just run around without its magic concealed. He still loves it, of course, but not for reasons that are for Cath to see or understand, simply because she doesn’t know what it all means, what kind of concession its existence is at all.

“Really?”

“Does that surprise you?”, Al asks.

He doesn’t really know what to do with that kind of response. To be perfectly honest, he never really knows what to say to anyone about his art. He doesn’t make it so that it can be seen and the context of it being viewed, the idea that other people might have thoughts about it, people that aren’t Fawley and maybe Felina, makes him unsettled. To him, his paintings and sketches are an extension of his thoughts and feelings, even if he can’t quite understand them. They’re like conversations with himself, but having other people see, that makes it a dialogue.

It’s not bad, that’s how art works. People see it and project their own thoughts and beliefs on it. Al’s fine with it, in theory, but he’s just not used to actually experiencing the feeling of it.

“It does say your name on the bottom”, Cath says, hesitating, “That is your name, right? Albus Severus Potter.”

She says the name like it’s foreign on her tongue, which is understandable.

“Yeah, I guess I don’t really call myself that.”

He doesn’t. Not ever. It doesn’t say on his name tag, not even on the CV he sent in for this job. ‘Al’ usually does the job just fine, and really, that’s how he thinks of himself. Albus Severus Potter is way to pompous for a guy like him.

“It’s a bit of a heavy name.”, Cath says, and Al has to snort at that. That’s a very polite way to phrase it.

“I was named after important people that died ages before I was born. That’ll end you up with a name like that.”

It’s kind of funny to explain it like that. He doesn’t think he’s ever done it before. Usually people just know, or if they don’t, they don’t really care. It’s kind of nice, though, being able to share that narrative for himself, even if he has to leave out all the important bits. Well, the bits that are the real story, anyway.

Cath grins at that. “Jesus, _Albus_.”

Al cringes. “You really don’t have to call me that.”

“I figured Al was short for, like, Alfred or maybe Alan or something.”

“Nope, it’s Albus, just like I wrote on there.”

“And it’s not even some kind of fancy alias or something?”

Al shakes his head. He’s never even considered signing his work differently. It _is_ his name, after all, even if it doesn’t always feel a lot like him. That’s the kind of thing you sign with your full name, isn’t it?

Cath shakes her head as well. “Wow. You know, I totally forgot about that.”

Al frowns. “What?”

“You being an artist. I think you mentioned it before, like once, ages ago. I completely forgot about it.”

Al shrugs, feeling strangely examined again. “Does it matter that much?”

“You tell me.” She doesn’t wait for him to do that. “That thing kinda makes it look like it matters a lot, though.”

Al shrugs again. He isn’t sure what that even means, no less what he’s supposed to say to it.

“Wait, are you an art student?”, Cath asks, so he doesn’t have to figure that bit out.

“Uh, yes.”, Al stumbles on the answer a bit. He is, of course, an art student, in a way, just not at university like she thinks. He doesn’t say that, though. It’s funny how easily people assume that about him, just because of his age.

“I can’t decide if that makes sense or not.” She’s looking at him with this measuring look, almost like she’s sizing him up. It makes him a little uncomfortable.

Al pushes his hair out of his eyes. “I just like to draw stuff, it’s not a big deal.”

“You’re good, though.” She says it like it’s a fact.

It’s a compliment, but Al’s face still crunches up. He looks away, so she doesn’t see it, but he’s not fast enough.

“What?”, she says, stepping closer, “Have you looked at that thing? It’s incredible!”

Al shrugs. This is the kind of conversation he really wants to avoid. “It’s just a sketch.”

“Sure”, Cath says and calls him out with a confidence that he doesn’t expect, “That’s why you carry it around with you in your pocket.”

Al blushes, he can’t help it. It’s stupid, because Cath can’t know for sure that he does carry the picture around with him. He could have just drawn it recently and forgot it in his pocket or something for all she knows. But his stupid face basically confirms what she’s saying.

“Well, yeah”, he says lamely, “still.”

Cath grins at him knowingly. She didn’t use to tease him this much, did she?

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Al can feel himself blush even harder. It’s terrible, really. He needs to get it under control.

He doesn’t even really know what to answer, because sure, Felina and he are _something_ , but they never—well, they haven’t exactly said the words. Al doesn’t want to assume. Well, he is already assuming, kind of, in his head, but doing it out loud is something else entirely.

Cath nudges him, forcing him to look at her again. “You’re actually embarrassed, aren’t you?” She chuckles. “That’s kind of precious, actually.”

Al just looks to the floor. He really doesn’t know what to say to that. He thought he doesn’t like talking about his art, but this is actually so much worse. Maybe because he never considered that it would even come up. He never—nobody even knows about him and Felina. Except like, maybe Paola. Because she’s a nosy lady and doesn’t have any problems assuming things. Not that she’s making very big leaps, but still. He doesn’t—he isn’t ready—he isn’t prepared to talk about it. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t even know if it makes any sense at all, taken out of the comfortable box the whole thing occupies in his life, outside of Italy, outside of the summer.

Maybe Cath can sense that he’s freaking out a bit.

“Relax, it’s fine, I won’t bother you anymore.” She pauses. “She’s really pretty, though, you know?”

Al nods. He can deal with that—Felina is nice to look at, that’s just a fact. Like sunrises or waterfalls, she’s just inherently beautiful. Al’s known it since he first met her, so out of everything, that’s pretty easy to admit.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ll show you a picture of Sally—you know, my girlfriend.”

Her hand reaches for her back pocket and Al’s tired brain is surprised for a moment, thinking that she’ll pull out a similar drawing that she carries around with herself, but no, of course not, that’s not really a common thing.

Instead, it’s the same blank object he’s seen her use before, talk into the night he was freaking out in the back room. Her phone. Right, some of them can take photos, too.

Cath makes a few motions that remind Al of different movements he might do with his wand, then she holds out the thing to him. Al takes it, hesitantly, and as soon as she lets go, he almost drops it. But he manages to stop it in time and squints at the surface instead.

He actually sees Cath first, even though she’s only taking up maybe a third of the picture. She’s visible from the side, kissing another girl’s cheek, who’s smiling directly into the camera. She has ginger hair and pale skin, but the curve of her mouth strikes Al as somehow smug.

“It’s a nice picture.”, he says, handing the phone back, because he feels like the situation requires some sort of comment. He touches the screen in the process and something about it changes. Al hopes that he didn’t break it. 

Cath presses a button on the side and pockets the phone. “Not quite as nice as yours.”

Al just shrugs.

“You really don’t use phones a lot, do you?”

He isn’t quite sure what tipped her off, but at this point, it could be any number of things.

Al grimaces, but he’s secretly glad about the change of subject. “I think we’ve already established that.”

He throws a quick look around the bar. It’s not that he wants to do anymore work, but they’ve just been standing there chatting for quite a while. There’s really not a lot to do, though.

“Yeah, sure, it’s just kind of hard to believe. I think you should try it sometime.”

Al makes a face. “Why?”

“Well, it’s kind of useful. You know, maybe so the next time there’s an emergency they don’t have to send some other patient to come find you at your workplace.

Al takes a minute to connect the dots. “Oh, you mean Scorpius—he’s not really a patient, I don’t think they’d do that. It’s just—my cousin Rose works there, so when she found out that they couldn’t get a hold of me, she sent him to come find me.”

Cath blinks. “So your cousin, who’s a doctor, found out that her grandfather or something is in the hospital and sent some random dude in crutches to come find you?”

“Rose and Fawley—Rose and Alistair aren’t related. She’s—she’s on the other side of the family, but she knew I’d need to know. And Scorpius is her boyfriend, so not really a random dude.”

“Right, I guess I shouldn’t have assumed about the crutches, that was a bit rude, but—” Cath shakes her head. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but that’s both confusing as fuck and a terrible line of communication. Like, so many things could go wrong there.”

Al blinks. That’s actually one of the things he hasn’t considered before. “Yeah, you’re right.”

And she is, absolutely. Sure, he would have found out about what happened to Fawley eventually, but there’s no telling when exactly. And what’s maybe even more lucky is that Fawley got to the hospital at all. If he didn’t have that meeting with the Diggorys that evening, maybe he wouldn’t have been found until Al came home. Al knows very well that with those attacks, timing is crucial. There could have been lasting damages a lot worse than what he has to deal with, now.

The thought fills him with panic. “You’re really fucking right.”

Cath looks at him, alarmed. Maybe she can tell that he’s kind of freaking out again.

She touches his shoulder lightly.

“It’s all right, it all turned out fine, didn’t it?”

Al nods, mechanically. “Yeah, this time.”

“Good”, Cath says slowly, “so you can prepare for something to happen again and it’ll be all right, too.”

Al nods, his thoughts still swirling around in circles.

Cath puts her arms across his shoulders briefly and squeezes.

“C’mon, it’ll all be fine. I know it’s scary right now, but you can deal with this.”

It’s not that big of a line, as far as words can go. But if it isn’t the most helpful thing he’s heard since all of this has happened.

* * *

Al can’t wait to get out of there as soon as his shift ends. He can tell that Cath’s concerned, so he assures her that he won’t be alone when he gets home. He won’t—Fawley will be there.

And he is. Al feels half-dead after the long night and the past days with so little sleep and then the walk home, but as he stumbles into the art room, he can hear Fawley noises from the kitchen.

“Good morning”, Al calls and has to suppress a yawn immediately. Even so, he can hear the anxiety in his own voice.

Fawley is making tea. He looks fine. He looks normal, like the whole weekend never happened.

Al can basically feel the anxiety in his stomach deflate.

“You need to go to bed, boy.”, Fawley says, but he’s already passing Al a mug. Al takes it.

Fawley drinks tea at all times of the day and by now, Al’s used to that. He still almost burns his tongue because he drinks too fast. Apparently, there are some things he’ll never learn.

“I know”, Al says. He notices that his fingers are shaking again, wiggling against the surface of the table.

Fawley sighs. “I promise I’m not going to drop dead while you sleep.”

“I know”, Al says, even though really, he doesn’t. Sure, it’s unlikely, but still—He shakes the thought out of his head. He can’t think like this. He’ll make himself crazy.

“I’m trying really hard not to make myself crazy”, he says, because he’s so damn tired and it’s hard to say anything but his direct thoughts.

Fawley takes the mug out if his hands. “Sleep usually helps with that.”

“I know”, Al says again, because he really does know that, it’s just—“It’s just—” He can’t come up with a way to finish the sentence.

“I’m sorry.”, is what he settles for. He doesn’t even know what it is that he’s saying. _I’m sorry I’m being like this, I’m sorry you’re stuck in this situation with me of all people, I’m sorry no one else seems to care._

“C’mon”, Fawley says, “Just get to bed. I won’t go anywhere just now.”

And Al goes to bed.

* * *

When he wakes up again about seven hours later, his head is a lot quieter. Sleep helps, like it always does, even when Al has a pretty complicated relationship with it.

He makes himself take a shower and clean himself up. He can’t sort anything out if he doesn’t sort himself out. It’s a hard lesson, but Al thinks he’s starting to learn it.

When he comes out into the art room, Fawley is sat behind one of the big easels, the one that Al has dubbed as the secret project one, because he always covers it as soon as Al enter the room. This time is no exception.

Al tries not to take it personally. Merlin knows he doesn’t like showing his work around before it’s done, not even to Fawley sometimes, so he can’t exactly begrudge the old man. Some things need to grow in secret for a little bit before they can hold up to the terrifying pressure of being seen.

He still takes a moment to just stand there, in the middle of the flat, feeling a bit lost. What is he supposed to do now?

That’s the question. Somehow, it’s always the question.

He starts by making breakfast-slash-lunch for him and Fawley, employing his new knowledge of food groups and nutrients to make it extra balanced. It doesn’t quite work out, since he’s limited by whatever he can find in the fridge, but he’s doing his best. In his head he decides that if Fawley eats healthily, that’ll help.

It might not be quite as effective a strategy as he hopes, but healthy eating always helps, right? Besides, it’s something he can probably do without Fawley telling him off too much, because Al as good as always cooks for them anyway.

As usual, the act of making food puts his thoughts back into gear. Not that they’ve been truly out of it, they’ve been acting up what seems like even in his dreams, but he’s getting to enough cognitive function that he can try and deal with them, now.

Right. Emergencies. Phones. Lines of communication.

He offers Fawley a plate. He takes it without complaint. Al is glad, because he needs some avenue for his worrying and with the way Fawley’s been acting, it looked a little like he might not let Al do that at all. Not that Fawley could stop Al from worrying. He might force him to not act on it, though.

“How is it that wizards have such terrible communications?”, Al asks, because of all the things that are running through his mind, this is the one it etches on to. Maybe because it doesn’t make any sense.

“I think the owls of the world would be offended by that”, Fawley says, already looking through one of his old sketchbooks again.

Al frowns. “So we maintain outdated and dangerous standards because we’re scared to offend birds?”

Fawley looks up at this, his blue eyes piercing as always. It’s almost like Al isn’t used to them anymore, just because they’ve been closed for a couple of days. Maybe he’s never been used to them in the first place.

“I do know some owls I would hate to offend”, he says, not really answering the question. He’s not asking his own either, at least not out loud, but his eyes do. Maybe that’s his way of giving Al an out. Al doesn’t want one, though.

“It’s just—they take a really long time, don’t they? I mean, not forever long, but too long if you need a really quick message. Like in emergencies.”

Fawley tilts his head. “You are aware that there are other ways of getting a message across?”

“You mean like the floo system if you only stick your head in?”

“For example. Then there are the good old-fashioned red sparks to tell a nearby wizard you’re in trouble, of course. And then there are those talking patroni they invented in the First Wizarding War. Very smart magic, that.” He sounds casual, like this is a mildly interesting conversation that doesn’t much involve their situation at all.

“Those aren’t very accessible”, Al says, which is a word he’s heard a lot from Rose when they first figured out how to make Scorpius’ wheelchair work in Hogwarts and the again from Scorpius himself when he tried to find a way to get Squibs and house elves and goblins to be able to use the Knight Bus.

“Not everyone has a fireplace.” They don’t.

“And not everyone can do a patronus, much less a talking one.” Al learned it, but he hasn’t tried it in quite some time.

“And the sparks only work if there are no muggles around and even then, they are pretty unspecific.”

“You’re not wrong”, Fawley says. Al almost thinks he’ll keep being his infuriating self and leave it at that, but he doesn’t.

“The goblins used to make those mirrors that could be used to talk to each other. Very useful, but hard to get a hold of, especially now. I think there was some internal disagreement in goblin politics or something and the guy who invented the technique never told anyone else how it was done.”

“Seriously?”

Fawley just shrugs. “That’s what they’re telling me. If it’s not that, there’s some other reason they’re not making them anymore. Or maybe they just don’t sell them to wizards anymore, who knows with goblins. It’s no wonder portraits are in such high demand these days.”

Al’s not sure if that’s true. Sure, they get commissions, but that’s because Fawley is about as famous as it gets in the world of wizarding art. Then he reconsiders the whole sentence and realises he has no idea how portrait sales are related to magical mirror phones.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a set of portraits is a long-time investment, of course, not to mention quite a lot of effort, so it’s not a very big market either way, but demand has certainly risen over the last decade or so—I suppose you’re too young to notice, though.”

“No, I meant, what does that have to do with emergency calls and communication and stuff?”

Fawley stares for a moment, then his face turns into something, well, almost something a little softer.

“Well, what do you think why so many old wizard families have paintings of their ancestors hanging around their houses?”

Al shrugs. “I kind of figured it was for the sake of prestige? Maybe with a hint of bigotry? You know, to show off your money and your absurdly long genealogy?”

Fawley chuckles. “Well, yes, but that’s not the whole reason. They do have them at Hogwarts, too, and the ministry and St. Mungo’s.”

Al throws his hand in the air. “I don’t know, for the sake of fine art? To commemorate important people? So the walls aren’t completely bare?”

Fawley has this amused glint in his eyes, the one that Al’s so used to. There’s something else there, too, though.

“You really don’t think about this a lot, do you?”, Fawley asks.

Al can’t help but feel annoyed. “Well, no. It’s an absurd thing to think about! Art is art. It doesn’t need a purpose.”

At this, Fawley smiles. Al can’t decide if that makes him feel good, because Fawley is smiling and that means it can’t be all bad, or if it just makes infuriated because he’s obviously being made fun of.

“You’re right, of course”, Fawley says, “It’s not the point of a portrait, of course, but you know of course that they can talk? And move from frame to frame?”

_Oh._

“Oh.”

Al blinks. As soon as the realisation sets in, he immediately starts feeling stupid. “I never even considered—well, of course. Oh Merlin, that’s really obvious, isn’t it?”

Fawley shrugs. “Not to someone like you.”

He doesn’t say it in a teasing way, more like a fact that’s impossible to get around. Well, it is a fact, in a way, considering that to Al, it obviously wasn’t obvious at all.

“That’s—that’s incredible, actually! How come _we_ don’t have them everywhere?”

This time, Fawley actually laughs. “But we do, though, Al, we really do.”

He gestures around the flat wildly, that is indeed filled with paintings, most of them portraits and most of them magically shrunk in order to make room for even more of them.

“Yeah, sure”, Al says, feeling the excitement rise in his chest, “But not like that, we don’t really—”

He quiets at that, realising what he’s saying. It’s not even that they never talk to their portraits, Fawley does it plenty, catering to their sometimes quite strange personalities. He always says it is so they don’t unlearn how to speak. Al’s not sure if that’s an actual concern, but he’s picked up the habit. Sure, they talk to their portraits, they just don’t—yeah.

“Nevermind”, Al says.

Fawley picks up another notebook, sorting through it with the tip of his pencil.

“On that note”, he says, apparently having moved on from the conversation already, “Do you think you could put me in touch with your father?”

Al, still caught up in both the fascination and the sadness of the possibilities of his discovery, doesn’t quite catch the meaning of the question right away.

“Wait”, he says, “what?”

* * *

The next few days, Al tries to keep himself busy.

It’s a distraction as much as a quest to do all the things no one else seems to deem necessary or important. By no one else, Al really just means Fawley, who, well, in face of the fact that he’s just been diagnosed with a pretty severe illness, acts remarkably exactly the same way he always does.

It drives Al insane.

It drives Al insane because he suddenly notices all the things that Fawley does that are a little reckless. Like paint for hours on end without a break. Or walk around the city on his own without telling anyone exactly where he’s going. Or really just be on his own anywhere without anyone who can act if something bad happens.

When Al says anyone, he really means Al.

“Let’s not put a bell on each other, alright?”, says Fawley when Al brings the issue up, like it’s a two-way street. It’s not a two-way street. Al’s not the one who is sick.

“He can’t stop his entire life, Al”, says Scorpius, with a surprising amount of patience. “I don’t do that either.”

That shuts Al up for a moment and makes him reconsider. So maybe he’s overreacting a bit. Or a lot.

The conversation does make him feel a bit guilty though, so he tries to keep it down a bit. Well, he tries to keep it down where he can. He tries to find some sort of medium, if not happy, then at least not completely miserable.

He tries to do some of the things where Fawley maybe won’t notice them. Make their meals as healthy as he can. Put new glasses of water next to his easel. Try to distract him with conversation or tea when he’s been at it for too long. Do even more of the chores with his own magic so Fawley doesn’t have to use his.

Al’s pretty sure that Fawley is onto him anyway, but he doesn’t say anything about those. Maybe because he thinks they’ll help, but Al has the sinking suspicion that Fawley only plays along to humour him. It doesn’t really make Al feel better.

So yeah, he keeps himself busy. That helps a bit, the same way it always does, even though this type of feeling wrong is different from the one he’s used to.

Because he does feel wrong, like he’s being too fast, too bright in a world that’s always lagging behind a little. It’s the opposite of how he usually feels, colourless and a little too slow, like he can always only see half of what’s there, or it’ll be too much to bear.

It’s still too much, but Al is too much, too, a frantic brim under his skin that keeps him awake. It is a little bit like when he used to spend the entire night walking through the streets of London, but somehow not like that at all. He doesn’t do that anymore. He also doesn’t like to examine this feeling, so he doesn’t think about it. He just does.

Yeah. Busy.

He goes to buy a phone, for example. Paintings as communication aside, though the thought burns somewhere in the back of his mind, leaving imprints with a significance Al isn’t quite sure of yet, for now, they’re the fastest and simplest way to communicate in case of an emergency. In theory, at least.

He’s buying two phones actually. Much like the paintings, they don’t really have a purpose if you only have one of them, Al figured.

He needs two, one for himself and one for Fawley.

The process of it is a bit of an awkward affair.

Al chalks it up to the fact that he knows basically nothing about phones and has to somehow disguise the fact, because the salesgirl seems to think he should have a basic grasp of what kind of phone he wants.

Apparently, there are different brands. At this point, Al is a little scared.

“I’m looking for something really basic”, he manages to say, figuring that’s vague enough to sound not all that unreasonable. “Mostly for emergencies.”

Luckily, something like understanding crosses the salesgirl’s face.

He ends up with something that doesn’t look very much like Cath’s except maybe the shape. There are a lot more buttons with numbers on it, Al’s pretty sure. Honestly, the whole thing is just very confusing.

The boxes feel weird in his hand and he feels even stranger paying for it. He’s somewhat familiar with Muggle money, now, but he’s never spent so much of it at once. He basically only ever uses it for when he goes to Italy and the occasional book. There’s groceries, of course, but that’s Fawley’s money, not his.

He looks down at the boxes in his hand and feels utterly lost. He idly wishes he could ask Lily to help him with this. She always knew all about this kind of stuff.

Well, Al will have to figure it out.

He wants to figure it out, because as soon as he figures it out, he can use it and then they’ll be safer.

He reads the instructions a couple of times, before he gets the idea to plug the phone in. One of them. He doesn’t want to ruin both of them at once.

Plugging it in seems to do something. He should have known—he’s used computers before, they don’t work without power either. But isn’t the point of phones that you can carry them around with you?

“Are you going to get to some art done today?”, Fawley asks while Al is still pondering this.

Al blinks. “Sure”, he says, then looks at the clock, “actually, no, I need to go meet Rose for a run, or she’ll come looking for me.”

It sounds like an exaggeration, but it really isn’t. Al didn’t even think to go running the day after Fawley first came home from the hospital and she actually showed up at their door. Fawley had been in a meeting with the Diggorys again, without Al, so at least there was no awkward encounter there.

That’s another thing that drives Al up the wall. He kind of gets that Fawley doesn’t want to slow down, like Scorpius said, he can’t stop his entire life. That, however, doesn’t mean that he has to speed it up.

Somehow that seems to be what he’s doing, though. That project with the Diggorys, for example. Fawley has all reasons in the world to put it on the back burner for a while, but he’s doing the exact opposite and works on it harder than ever before.

Al can’t exactly blame him for that, but it does make him pretty nervous. Making magical art, well, it’s magically exhausting, even if you don’t need a wand for it. It’s obvious to Al and surely Fawley, who understands how magic and art work together a lot better than he does knows as well. Al has to think of the conversation he had about it with Felina. How long ago that seems! How different everything was back then! It’s almost scary to think about.

In any case, he knows he can’t say anything about it. He doesn’t have to ask to know that it would be pointless. There’s some kind of energy about Fawley when he’s being this serious. Trying to stop him won’t help Al’s case. And he probably shouldn’t be trying to stop him, anyway. Al knows he would be miserable if someone kept him from making art. And truly, it’s not like he wants Fawley to stop.

And then there’s that secret project that Fawley has going on, that he still won’t show Al. All in all, it’s a lot. All in all, Fawley’s probably working more than he ever has in all the time Al’s known him.

And Al goes running with Rose. And then he tries to figure out the stupid phone some more. Then he goes to work and to sleep and rinse and repeat. Really, it’s the same as always, except it isn’t at all because Al doesn’t feel the same as always. He feels on edge. That’s not even that new, either, it’s just that usually, he doesn’t notice so much.

Al spends Thursday morning (meaning Thursday, early afternoon, because that’s when Al wakes up), trying to draft a letter to his father.

Fawley wants to talk to him because his father used to know the guy he’s supposed to be painting—Cedric Diggory, the teenager that died when Voldemort came back—and Fawley wants to collect as many memories and views of him as possible.

It makes sense, really, when you’re trying to paint a person you’ve never met. Just copying a photo or something like that doesn’t do it—the personality of the painting is just an imprint of the artist’s impression. Fawley needs to get a sense of what the guy was like if he wants the portrait to be somewhat accurate.

Al gets the theory behind it, really. Writing the letter is still a challenge.

“Do you want me to be there when you meet my dad?”, he asks Fawley, who’s skipping through a notebook on the other side of the room.

“Do you think it’ll make a difference?” Fawley likes to answer questions with more questions. Al doesn’t even get annoyed by that anymore.

“I’m not sure”, Al says. The idea makes him squirm either way. It’s the collision of two so different parts of his life that is uncomfortable enough on its own, but with how everything’s been going lately, it’s even worse.

“Remember how we talked about how my parents might not have the best opinion of you anymore? I think that might be an issue.”

Fawley hums. “Do you know how he feels about it at all?”

Al squirms in his seat. “I think he’s worried about me? You know, he doesn’t really think I know what I’m doing?”

Fawley makes a dismissive hand gesture. “No, not that. I mean about Cedric.”

He’s taken to refer to his subject by his first name. It feels a little strange, but there’s a certain intimacy that’s required for this work, Al supposes.

Al needs a moment to think about this. He’s known Cedric Diggory’s story for a long time—it is pretty significant, even if it’s just a small part in the huge saga that’s his father’s youth. Al has always lapped those stories up, he’s always felt like knowing these stories would help him understand his family better, his parents, maybe even himself. It works a little, but not as much as Al thought it would. He’s too close to really see how those things affect all of them, long past as they are.

Still, it’s only the last couple of weeks that Al really dove into it—courtesy of reading all of Fawley’s letters. Sure, Fawley prefers personal interviews, but Al has accompanied him to a lot of those, too—at first out of curiosity as to how he does them, later because he’s become invested in the story. Now he tries to come with whenever possible because it soothes the nervous energy under his skin to know that he’ll be there in case something more happens to Fawley.

Still, Al knows his father and how he thinks and there are faint memories of mentions of Cedric from time to time, in the occasional speech, or in hushed conversations with Al’s aunts and uncles. Harry Potter doesn’t like to tell his children much about how his youth really was—he always tells the same stories, the nice ones, the silly ones, the hopeful ones that tell of a better future and how important it is to be kind and brave. Al doesn’t think he’s lying per se, or even dressing up the truth—he believes that his father really does see it like that. But he’s not naïve enough to believe there’s nothing being left out. He and his siblings have filled the gap with overheard conversations and history books.

“It’s probably one of his regrets. How it all turned out with him I mean.”

Fawley makes a sound with his breath. “That’s hardly his fault, is it?”

“I don’t think it works like that for dad”, Al says.

“Of course it doesn’t”, Fawley says, not unkindly.

There’s a pause and Al is back to figuring out what he’ll put in the damn letter, when Fawley lets out a sigh.

“I think I’ll talk to him on my own. You write that in that letter and then get back to some drawing.”

“Sure”, Al says, and proceeds to take way too long to find the right words.

After that, he starts thinking about dinner, then he has to go meet Rose and after that, he has to get to work.

* * *

It takes Al less than a week to cave and ask Cath for a help with the phones. He manages to charge them and turn them on and even click through a few of the (largely confusing) menu options. He still doesn’t know how to call anyone, though, which, really, is the only thing he cares to do with the stupid thing.

He knows it has something to do with the little card he got along with it, but he can’t quite figure out where that thing is supposed to go. From the way everyone’s acted when he bought it he has a feeling he should be able to do it on his own and he probably would, were he a typical twenty-year-old getting a phone for his elderly grandparents that don’t quite go with the times, but he just isn’t. And his patience—that admittedly, hasn’t been very strong from the start—is running thin.

So Cath it is. Out of all his limited options (going back to the store to ask for advice, for example) asking her seems like the least embarrassing one. She already knows that he isn’t very good with modern technology and she actually told him he should get a phone. He’s taking her advice, after all, so she should be willing enough to offer some more.

Besides, it’s Cath—it’s not—well, she’s no stranger. Somehow with her, it’s easier than it would be with most other people.

“Can you do me a favour?”, Al asks her right at the beginning of the shift. That way, he can’t forget about it. His desire to just finally figure out the whole thing far surpasses the anxiety that always accompanies asking things like that, but that doesn’t mean the anxiety isn’t still there.

Cath doesn’t seem to think much of it. “Sure, what’s up?”

“Remember how you told me to get a phone?” He can feel himself blushing. He isn’t even sure why, it’s just such an awkward situation. Why can’t he just spit it out?

Cath’s eyes widen. “Did you actually get one?”

Al nods. “There’s just a few things about it I can quite figure out though…”

Cath makes a wavy sort of gesture with her hand. “It’s really intuitive, you’ll get the hang of it soon enough.”

Al makes a noncommittal sound. He really doubts that, but he doesn’t want to say that. “Still, could you maybe show me just a few basic things?”

To his relief, Cath grins. “Of course I can!” She hits his arm playfully. “I can’t actually believe this is happening! You are entering the realm of normal people, Al.”

“I’m normal!”, Al protests. He’s not, but most of the time he thinks he has a pretty good handle on pretending like he is in the Muggle word. He’s certainly better at it than a lot of other people he knows.

Cath gives him a look. “You really aren’t.”

Al isn’t quite sure what facial expression he makes in response, but it must be something, because she hurries to add: “And that’s a good thing. It’s what makes you fun!”

It’s strangely reminiscent of the conversation they only had a few nights ago. Al doesn’t really know what to think of it now, that he’s not more or less dying from sleep deprevation. Al also doesn’t really think of himself as fun, so there’s that.

“Well, yeah.”, he says instead, “We need to get to work.”

And so they do.

* * *

Predictably, Harry Potter does want to help give Cedric Diggory the best magical painting ever, which is why he writes Al back that he’ll meet Fawley pretty much immediately. Turns out obsessing was for nothing.

 _I’m good at writing professional letters,_ Al tells himself miserably as his nice-thought-about-himself for the day. That’s obviously why his dad agreed. It’s all due to Al being extremely good at his job.

Al doesn’t really believe that, because how professional can professional correspondence really be when it’s his dad, who is also well-known for literally not being able to say to no to anyone who asks for his help.

Still, he sings it for a minute or so in his mind. _I’m good at writing professional letters. I’m good at opening professional letters. By now I can sort of do a cool-looking signature. I ace salutations in various degrees of sucking up._

At least half of that is kind of true. Take that. He can have positive thoughts about himself just fine.

Al doesn’t really know who he’s arguing with, but it’s started to feel important somehow.

He takes a deep breath and goes to write another letter to set a date with his father. What a weird, weird life it is.

* * *

Maybe not quite as predictable is Cath’s expression when Dan pulls out the box of his phone out of his bag in the back room. They’re done with their shift and, as always, tired as hell, but Al is committed to his quest of finding out how this works and Cath is committed to her quest of supervising his journey into the modern world.

Her words, not his.

So Al pulls out the box and she looks, well, mildly dubious.

Al opens the box and pulls the phone out, clunky buttons and all.

“Where did you even get that?”, Cath asks.

Al frowns. “At a store? It’s not like, fake or anything, right?”

He had been a bit worried because Cath’s phone looked so different, but the store seemed legit…

“No”, Cath says, “it’s just—what did you tell the salesperson?”

“I was looking for something simple so Alistair could call me if there was an emergency?”

The name’s starting to glide over his lips a little easier now.

Cath sighs deeply. “Did you specify that the phone was for you?”

“Well, I mean, I did get one for Alistair, too.”

“Why am I not surprised that apparently that Alistair doesn’t have a phone either?”

“He’s ninety-five!”, Al says like he’s confident that’s a suitable excuse.

It looks like he’s in luck for once.

“Okay, fine”, Cath says, “I suppose he’s excused. But you—I’ll just tell you that you got a real old-person phone and leave it at that.”

Al has no clue what exactly that means, so he just smiles timidly. “Will you still help me?”

“Of course I will, idiot, what’s the problem?”

Cath figures out the issue with the little card in just about two minutes, then she clicks around a bit and explains to Al how he can call Fawley. Then she opens a different window and enters a number and her name.

“There you go. Now you can call me if you ever have another technology emergency.”

She does something else and her own phone in her pocket pings. “And I have your number. Just, you know, could come in handy at some point.”

Al shrugs. He doesn’t really know what the social protocol is for this situation. “Sure.”

* * *

And just like that, life goes on.

Fawley moves on with Cedric’s portrait. He meets a few other people who apparently knew him. He collects photographs and even newspaper clippings and starts a few preparatory sketches. They are, of course, incredible. Al can’t wait to see the finished product.

Fawley’s fine.

He’s fine for now. He’ll be fine for a while probably. It comes in waves, Al knows that. He’ll be fine until something happens and he isn’t fine anymore and then it’ll get worse. There’s no telling when that thing will happen and what it’ll be. Al knows that as well.

He still doesn’t think that time should just move on like that. It does, though. Time doesn’t care about Al’s opinions. If it did, perhaps Fawley would never get old at all. Then again, that’s a stupid thought. Fawley’s been old when Al met him. He’s not significantly older now.

Al’s never felt like Fawley’s old, though. He still doesn’t, really. It’s just that he can’t help but be reminded anymore.

Al could really do without the reminder.

So he keeps busy. Writes letters. Cooks meals. Does research. Finds more people for Fawley to talk to. Draws up timetables and schedules. Sets up the other phone.

He’s almost surprised when Fawley barely puts up any fight when Al insists that he carry the thing with him at all times. Maybe he understands that Al’s trying to look out for him. Maybe he just thinks Al will have an aneurism if he refuses. Al doesn’t know. What matters is that Fawley lets Al show him how it works and agrees to take it with him.

So Al is keeping busy. What he isn’t doing, strictly, is painting. Or drawing.

He doesn’t notice it at first, because Fawley is just back from the hospital and Al has to adjust, mentally, and then there is so much to do, or rather, he’s making him do so much, so maybe he’s trying to make excuses for himself, but—

“Albus”, Fawley says one day, as Al’s coming out of the shower after his daily run and is already grabbing for the letter he’s received from Hogwarts, “What are you doing?”

Al looks down at the letter. He looks back up at Fawley. “My job?”

“Really?”, Fawley asks.

“Yeah”, Al says, “I asked Uncle Neville for students’ records from when Cedric was a student—that way we might be able to contact some of his old classmates.”

“We’re already doing that”, Fawley says.

“Yes”, Al says, “I mean, more of them.”

“We already have his three closest friends, his ex-girlfriend and your father, who was his competitor. Don’t you think that more or less covers it?”

“I mean, probably” Al bites his lip. “I don’t know, I was just thinking…”

“Alright”, Fawley says abruptly, beckoning Al over with his hand. Al almost doesn’t know how to react to that. “Come over here. This is going to be an important teaching moment.”

“Okay…”, Al says, carefully. He’s learned to treat Fawley’s teaching moments with care. They are rarely straight-forward and mostly sound like cryptic nonsense. Some of them actually turn out to make a lot of sense in hindsight, but that usually doesn’t help Al any. It’s not that Fawley’s a bad teacher, it’s just that he teaches best when he isn’t trying very obviously. Al doesn’t really know how to bring that up, though, so he usually just doesn’t and pretends he gets it.

He just tries to follow Fawley’s weird advice, if he can figure out how at all.

“There are”, Fawley starts, like it’s a lecture and maybe it is, “different parts of work. There is preparing for work you have to do, there is reflecting on work you’ve already done to make improvements, there is making sure you’re even in a condition to do work, there is being on the look-out for future work.”

Al really didn’t think this was where the whole thing was going.

“All of this”, Fawley continues dramatically, “is very important. But it doesn’t help any to do all of that, if you aren’t going to do any of the work itself.”

“Yes”, Al says cautiously, because on a logical basis that makes a lot of sense, but at the same time, he doesn’t have any clue what Fawley is on about.

Fawley sighs. Apparently, that is not the response he was hoping for.

“Albus”, he says, “What _is_ your profession?”

The way he accentuates it, makes it sound like any part of that is in question. They both know what his job is. As for a profession—that seems like too a fancy word for anything that Al is doing with his life. Al can feel a headache coming on. He’s too tired for those kinds of mind games.

“Writing letters and doing stuff for you? Also backing the bar at the _Nightowl_ , I suppose?”

Fawley sighs even deeper and Al considers for a second what he’s gotten wrong. That _is_ what he’s doing after all.

“No”, he says, “it isn’t. That’s just what you’re doing so you can do what you actually need to be doing.”

“Okay…”, Al says again.

“Your profession is to make art. And to do everything to get better at it. And in the past two weeks I’ve seen you do a lot of things, but none of them seem to have been related to any of that.”

He lets the statement linger in the room for a bit.

“So you’re telling me I should” Al hesitates, searching for the right word. “make art?”

“Yes!”, Fawley shouts as if Al’s suddenly hitting the jackpot. “In fact, as your employer, I demand it. It’s your official task now. Go make some art.”

Al blinks.

“Right now?”

“Of course right now!”

“What art?”

Fawley throws his hands in the air dramatically. “What art? I don’t know, any art. Preferably graphic art, but I can’t tell you what to do.”

Al doesn’t note the irony in that statement, considering Fawley can absolutely tell him what to do and is, in fact, doing so right now. Also, as if Al is going to start singing or write poetry or recite a play or whatever right there. He draws and he paints, that’s it. He doesn’t even know how he would start anything else.

But perhaps that isn’t the best argument, considering that right now, he doesn’t really know how to start painting or drawing right now, either.

“I just mean like, of what?”, he asks in a feeble attempt to get a better answer.

Fawley just raises and eyebrow. In matters like that, Fawley can be absolutely ruthless.

 _Like art_ , Al thinks idly, _art is pretty ruthless, too._

“Well, how do you usually decide?”

Al shrugs. “I don’t know.”

He doesn’t. He just starts. He gets a feeling and runs with that or maybe he sees something that starts a little spark in him. Or sometimes he just puts a pen to paper and doesn’t figure out what it is that he’s making until he’s halfway there.

But lately, well, he’s not been in that kind of mindset. He hasn’t been thinking about it, which shouldn’t be a problem, because usually, he doesn’t think about it all that much, either, at least not consciously. But maybe he does think about it a lot, usually, and he just hasn’t noticed because the whole issue leaves him dry.

He still sits down in front of his sketchbook, because that is what Fawley has asked him to do and he keeps putting his pencil to it, but somehow, it just doesn’t work.

It’s his head. Or in his head. There’s a lot there. In his head. A lot of stuff in his head. Maybe not only art, strictly. A lot of things, really.

Al is scared, but he doesn’t want to think about that.

He still doesn’t feel quite okay, but he doesn’t want to think about that.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he doesn’t want to think about that.

As it turns out, there are a lot of things that Al doesn’t want to think about.

So yeah. A lot of things that his brain wants to think about, but Al doesn’t. A lot of things that his brain wants to work through.

Making art, really, is Al’s preferred way of working through things.

It’s not that he doesn’t have anything to draw. He always has things to draw. If anything, now, he has even more things to draw. A hospital bed, maybe, the funky lights in the _Nightowl_ when Scorpius shows up all of the sudden, or the dim ones in St. Mungo’s corridor, or even the ones here, when the sun has gone down and Fawley switches on the big lamps and they work in silence together. They haven’t done that for a long time, have they?

So yeah, Al really should start. But he doesn’t feel ready to.

He’s not ready to let the thoughts into his head, he’s not ready to process. He can’t process yet.

One, two seconds he’s just staring at the blank page.

Then he blinks. He wants to try and stop the wetness, but the terrible feeling rising up in his chest is having none of it. He wants to detach, think about something else, solutions or recipes or anything, but it doesn’t work.

There’s a weird scratchy sound somewhere. It’s him. He’s making the sound.

He presses his eyes together and tries to stop it, but he can’t, it just keeps coming, so he tries to open them again, but it doesn’t help. There are too many tears for him to see.

There’s a pressure on his shoulders.

“There you go”, Fawley says in a kind, calm voice, and Al doesn’t know why he’s the one being comforted because he’s not the one who’s sick, he’s not the one who might die because of this one day, he’s just—Al.

“There you go”, Fawley says and he hands Al a tissue and a blanket and some tea, like he’s been preparing for it all along. Al can only let it happen.

“You’ll be alright. In the end, you’ll be fine. Just remember that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this chapter is extremely long (like double the last one), so I might need to slow down a bit if I don't want to exhaust my creative juices. I feel like a lot of the stuff in it isn't all that interesting, but it had to happen for the story so :/  
> Tell me what you think, though! I hope you enjoyed it!


	13. all this time I was finding myself and I (didn't know)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al makes some progress and Cath is very stressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know this is very late, but it is again pretty long at least!  
> Sadly, there are more bad news, namely that I have a lot of stuff going on in the next two weeks in my real life and I won't be able to write as much as I'd like plus restricted access to internet, so there probably won't be any updates until the beginning of August. I'm really sorry about that, but with everything going on I just can't keep uploading at the pace I am right now :(  
> Thanks for understanding!  
> Don't worry, I'll definitely be back though!

Crying, funnily enough, helps. Al always thought that was a myth they told people to make them feel better about it. Then he thinks about the time Rose finally started crying after her father died and asks himself why he hasn’t questioned that theory a long time ago.

Maybe it’s because personally, Al hates it. It’s terrible.

It’s not even the crying itself—that’s bad enough of course. Al doesn’t cry a lot. He can’t actually remember the last time he’s cried before he had his little breakdown in September. That’s not even that long ago, now that he thinks of it. It feels like it has been such a long time. In comparison, the past two years have almost flown by.

It’s terrible, in the sense that it reveals so much of him and makes him look stupid and most of the time, it doesn’t even make any sense, but once it starts, Al both can’t stop it from happening, nor can he find it in himself to care all that much. It’s on the way. The dam has been broken.

What he really doesn’t like, is how it unhinges something in him. It cracks open walls he doesn’t know are there and lets things out he doesn’t know are inside him. It clears into the blur that usually conceals his deeper thoughts from everyone, including himself, and zaps the nervous energy right into his heart.

Al likes his blur. Well, he doesn’t always like it, but he needs it. He has a system. He can deal with it.

This clarity he’s feeling right now—well, it’s terrifying. With that, he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t know how to deal.

He doesn’t even know what it is that brings it on—no matter what crying does, it can’t be magical enough to grant him revelations like this.

So maybe it’s the crying, maybe it’s the processing, maybe it’s the stress-cooking the healthiest meals ever, damn if Al knows.

But suddenly he gets it. Well, some of it. About himself and how he’s feeling.

He knows now that he is scared. He knows now that he has built himself something, even if other people struggle to see it, but he has built himself something that he likes, a place where he feels safe and where he feels like he’s doing what he’s supposed to do, which maybe is the most surprising revelation of it all, because that’s not how it works, that’s not how it’s supposed to be, this life he’s having is not supposed to be a forever-plan.

Doing chores for an elderly man in exchange for shelter, food, art supplies and the occasional life lesson while working in a bar is not a forever-plan for anyone. It’s what you do at eighteen when you’re lost and broke and don’t know what you want. But Al knows what he wants. He wants this. He doesn’t want things to change. He wants to live in this temporary place forever.

He feels safe here. And he’s scared shitless, because it might be taken away from him at some point.

It’s temporary. It’s always been temporary, but now, there’s suddenly a big expiration date on it, like a reminder, but not a helpful expiration date, because the only thing it says are three big question marks.

Put like that, it doesn’t actually tell Al anything he doesn’t already know. It just forces him to know it.

And now this whole clarity-thing he has going on is forcing him to know it even more.

Al doesn’t really know what to do with that knowledge.

In fact, maybe it isn’t so much what he’s doing with the knowledge as it is what the knowledge is doing with him.

Above all, it’s making him… …emotional.

“I’m not an emotional person!”, he tells Scorpius and Rose over Exploding Snap in their flat. They’re having a game night, but really, it’s just been Al rambling about all these feelings, which—well, suffice to say that it isn’t a very common thing.

“Of course you are”, Rose says calmly. She’s handling him talking about feelings way too much a lot better than she was handling him trying to be fine while acting really weird. “Everyone’s an emotional person, you just can’t always tell from the outside.”

Al huffs, but not because he disagrees. If anything, it seems to hypothetical and deep for him to understand, let alone argue with. “Just because you’re so damn expressive…”

At this, Scorpius snorts.

“What?” Al turns slightly to fix his gaze on him. “You know Rose, she’s all emotional and stuff all the time.”

Scorpius makes a face that’s a weird cross between disbelief, fondness and amusement. “To you, obviously. But that’s because you’ve been her best friend since you both were fetuses. She’s an icy smile-fortress to the rest of the world.”

He says it with such a confidence that Al finds it hard to question his words. On the other hand, it just sounds ridiculous.

“You keep saying that”, he replies, “but it’s just Rose!”

He looks at Rose for help. “You’re just Rose!”

She smiles weakly. “I’m just Rose.”

Scorpius leans over to kiss Rose’ cheek. “Nothing ‘just’ about you, Rosie.”

Rose smiles another smile, secret and shy, even though it’s just Al and Scorpius.

Further proof that Scorpius doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Rose is an open book—Al can read her just as easily. And he knows that Scorpius can, too.

“Now I can, obviously”, Scorpius says and right that second, the cards explode and they all have to duck away to avoid getting the ashes in their faces.

When they come back up, Scorpius grins. “I win again!” He pushes his fist in the air, even as Rose takes the cards to set up a new round.

Al counts the points and jots them down. Exploding Snap is mostly a game of luck, but Scorpius has been winning for five rounds straight.

“Someday I’m going to figure out how exactly you’re cheating here”, Al says, not really meaning any of it.

“I would never!”, Scorpius replies dramatically.

It doesn’t come out that dramatically, because it’s obviously true. Makes the score even more depressing, really.

“Is there a world cup in Exploding Snap, too?”, Al asks, “Because if so, I think you should definitely sign up.”

“Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest?”, Rose says, at the same time as Scorpius replies with a firm: “There isn’t.”

“Maybe you should use your power to create one”, Al suggests.

Scorpius throws him a long-suffering look. They all know that he hates his current position in the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Well, he doesn’t hate it, he loves working at the ministry way too much for that. He’s just extremely frustrated with it.

“Maybe that way he’ll get a transfer”, Rose suggests.

Scorpius throws her another look, because as much as he likes to not-complain (in the sense that he’s totally complaining, except he makes it sound like there are just a lot of fun challenges instead of stupid traditions and annoying people) he doesn’t like when anybody else does it for him.

“I’m thinking someone should create some new guidelines for betting”, Scorpius says, “it’s all over the place.”

“All over the place as in chaotic or all over the place as in all over the department?”, Al asks.

Scorpius grimaces. “Both.”

“There you go”, Al says cheerfully, “I don’t think there’s a more efficient way to annoy them into getting you as far away as possible from Magical Games and Sports.”

Scorpius purses his lips, but doesn’t refute the statement. It’s not quite an admission that that’s what he’s trying to do, but it’s as close as it gets with him.

He takes his cards. “What were we talking about again?”

“Al’s feelings”, Rose reminds him, putting down the first card.

“Right”, Al and Scorpius say at the same time.

There is a small beat of silence. Only then does Al realise that his friends are actually waiting for him to continue his over-the-top rant. Wow. They must be saints or something.

Al sighs. He might as well.

“It’s just so stupid!”

Rose and Scorpius share a look. They’re not even subtle about it.

“Not that. Well, yes that, all the feelings and all, but not only that. There’s just so much stuff out there that’s so stupid!”

“Like what?” Rose switches a few cards in her hands.

“Like everything!” Scorpius flinches at his raised voice and Al makes an effort to calm down a little. “Nothing makes any sense.”

He pauses, but neither Rose nor Scorpius fill the break with words. It’s an out, maybe, this time, if Al doesn’t want to get any more specific, but he doesn’t want to take it, not today. Not when this clarity is still there in his mind, telling him what exactly he’s angry at for once. Maybe allowing him to be angry at all, instead of just feeling bad.

“It’s just—so many bad things have been happening, alright?”

He sees Rose’ grip on her cards stiffen and almost regrets saying it out loud, but now that he’s started it, he can’t make himself stop anymore.

“Like, I know we aren’t exactly our parents, but our school years haven’t been a walk in the park either, with Uncle Ron and the attacks and the time travel bullshit. And I mean, I get it, life isn’t fair and you just have to do the best you can, right? But at some point, it should be enough. I mean, things have been mostly looking up for us, right? But all that comes is just more sickness and sadness. It’s not fair.”

There’s silence for a moment.

Then—“It really isn’t.”, Rose says, her voice somehow small and old at the same time. “But it’s not—it’s not the only thing there is, you know. There are good things, too, somewhere.”

“Yeah”, Al says, sadly, and he thinks it’s true, but he isn’t sure if he really believes it.

A new wave of feeling rises and picks him up with it. “But that’s just it, isn’t it? There are so many more things that are just so bloody stupid and I used to be able to ignore it all, but now it’s like my brain doesn’t even see the point anymore!”

It’s true. It’s maybe the most annoying thing about the blur being gone. Al can’t just hide all the shitty or even mildly annoying things in it, everything is just right there, and he gets to have feelings about it. Even if it’s kind of irrelevant and stupid.

“Like what on earth is up with owls?”

“Owls?”, Scorpius and Rose echo in sync.

“Yeah, bloody owls”, Al says, slamming the words with a certain satisfaction. It’s stupid, because that isn’t what he’s upset about, but still, it makes him feel a little better.

“How is it that we do like 90% of our whole communication thing with owls? It’s slow, it’s not very accurate, and just not practical a lot of the time. I got Fawley a muggle phone because that’s the most efficient way to make sure he can reach me if anything happens. How messed up is that? Like what is an elderly wizard or witch supposed to do when they need help? Write a damn letter? I don’t think so!”

“Well”, Scorpius shrugs, his voice careful and unsure, “I think most elderly wizards and witches don’t live alone.”

Al scoffs. He knows that Scorpius is right—taking care of your elders is kind of a cornerstone of Wizarding society, as much as they get wrong otherwise. And besides, even old wizards and witches can still do magic—they’re rarely completely helpless. But that doesn’t mean the owl-thing isn’t stupid regardless. “Yeah maybe, but still. There must be enough of them that don’t constantly have people around.”

“No, you’re right”, Rose says, “I’ve never actually thought about it, but it’s really not very smart.”

She looks thoughtful. _That’s kind of relevant to her interests,_ Al realises.

“There must be some other way”, Scorpius insists. He doesn’t like things that don’t work like they should. He’s not exactly alone in that, but he’s a little more extreme than most people.

“Portraits that are in different locations”, Al says, “but they are pretty expensive, so it’s mostly just old pureblood families that have them and besides, they’re hard to carry around and it always has to be the same artist, otherwise it doesn’t work that well. Other than that, there are fireplaces, of course, but not everyone has them either, and also that’s a physical strain. And talking patroni, of course, but not everyone can do those.”

Rose blinks. “You’ve put a lot of thought in this.”

Al blinks right back at her. “I suppose I have.”

Scorpius has his thinking face on, obviously still trying to pick apart the logic in his brain. “What about chocolate frog cards, though? They’re tiny portraits you carry around.”

“Well, have you ever seen a chocolate frog card talk?”, Al retaliates. “Making a portrait speak is really hard, and for some reason, it almost exclusively works with oil paintings.” Fawley sometimes does sketches that can speak, but even with his years and years of experience, those are rare. And they can’t hop to other iterations of the same portrait, so the point is kind of moot.

“Alright, no, I haven’t.”, Scorpius says, “Merlin.”

Al can tell that his friend isn’t satisfied with the whole discussion, which frankly, Al can understand. Al isn’t either. He doesn’t want to be right on this, but he just is. Nothing makes sense in this stupid world.

“You really do know your stuff, though”, Rose says, sounding almost impressed.

Al sighs again, suddenly feeling very tired, like he’s coming down from the rush of the discussion, like his feelings have burnt out somehow. Rose being impressed—that’s not really warranted.

“Well, yeah”, Al grumbles. “I’m not completely wasting my time while you guys are out there changing the world. I’m getting pretty good at obscure magical art trivia.”

* * *

The rest of the evening is a little lighter and a mostly free of emotional outbreaks about the injustices and inconsistencies of the world, thankfully, and Al goes to work feeling almost good. Better than he has in a while, anyway, which is bizarre, considering the circumstances.

But Al is tired of questioning his own psyche and his inner workings and all that jazz yet again, so he just leaves it for once. He doesn’t have the energy to feel guilty right now, and he definitely doesn’t have the energy to question whether he has a valid reason to or not.

Over the following days, a certain portion of the evening keeps repeating itself in his mind though, like an annoying advertisement, a blinking light at the back of his mind that gets harder and harder to ignore.

 _Chocolate frog cards, and the goblin-forged mirrors Fawley was talking about. Phones._ The things are swirling around in his head and coming together in a new form that Al can’t quite recognise yet, but it’s happening.

And so, he finds himself asking questions and finding books and—well.

Al doesn’t do portraits. Its not his thing. And yet.

And yet.

* * *

Just like that, time seems to speed up again. It’s almost Christmas when Al finally get a response from Lily. He’s not sure if the Muggle post is really that slow or if she’s taken her time, but mostly he feels ashamed that he’s almost forgotten about that. So much has happened. Still, he writes her back immediately and encloses his phone number. It’s a muggle way of communication and if Lily wants to take things the muggle way, she should be pleased. He hopes she’ll call at some point.

Fawley’s finished his interviews and preliminary sketches and has now moved on to the actual painting part of Cedric Diggory.

Al pays the process a lot of attention, partly because he’s worried that the extreme amount of magical effort something like that requires will worsen Fawley’s health, partly because it’s just extremely interesting. Also because something tells him that knowing more might _help,_ in a way and for something that Al can’t quite articulate yet, can’t quite make himself comprehend yet. But that’s neither here nor there.

Talking to his parents has become a little easier again and he doesn’t dread Sunday dinners anymore. To be perfectly honest, he feels guilty that he ever felt that way at all, like it’s a chore. It shouldn’t be, because it’s his parents and he loves them to pieces. They don’t have the kind of relationship that warrants those feelings of lingering dread and exhaustion, but things have just been so complicated. He just wishes they got it, wishes they understood why all of this is so important to him, why he still isn’t doing anything different, anything that’ll lead somewhere. It’s not that they ask that, they would never, but Al can still feel the thought heavy on all of their interactions.

It’s alright, though. He can’t expect to be understood when there’s barely any part of him that he understands himself.

And it’s getting better anyway, some of the tense strings of “We know better” loosening again. Al isn’t quite sure why, but he’s grateful for it.

He has the lingering suspicion that Fawley has something to do with it.

It took a bit until they could work out a good time for his father to meet him and Al was nervous the whole time while it was happening. At home in the flat staring in turns at a mirror and a sketchbook, but still.

When Al asked him how it had gone, afterwards, Fawley was pretty tight-lipped, only making cryptic comments like “Informative” and “A shame that I’m never going to paint him, really”, which, honestly, what else did Al expect.

His father never says anything about it, either, so maybe Al’s wrong to assume that they talked about him at all, but he notices that his parents stop questioning his career choices afterwards, even subtly. The timing might just be a coincidence, but still. On the other hand, he can’t even imagine what Fawley would have told them, so there’s that.

Christmas comes and goes, and Al makes sure he has presents for everyone and spends Christmas Day at the Burrow with the rest of his family. It’s a good one, this Christmas. Lucy brings Carolina again, and maybe Al is imagining it, but everyone seems to be a little more relaxed about that, too. Maybe it’s that they’re all getting used to her, maybe it’s because Scorpius is with his dad this year, but Al is content to not question the situation too much. He tries to talk to both of them more than he strictly has to and lets Lucy poke him with her questions.

She still seems tired, but maybe a little less so. When she asks him how he’s doing like she’s asking about the contents of the Department of Mysteries, he tries to answer her as honestly as he can.

He’s better, he thinks. A lot of stuff sucks and a lot of the time he feels it a lot more, but he feels like he has a direction again. It still sounds cryptic and vague, but he hopes she can tell that he’s trying.

He does a little asking in return, and she doesn’t exactly tell him about how she’s feeling, but she does tell him about her plans for the future a little. Al can already tell that she’s going to be a bigshot like virtually anyone else in his family it seems, but that’s fine. It’s good that she has a vision and a spirit, even though it might be hard.

James is the same as always, and Lily, while she seems changed somehow, in her demeanour and her confidence, seems happier than ever. She tells them all enthusiastically about things none of them really understand, but that’s not exactly anything new with her.

Al gives her his phone number in person again and she agrees to call every once in a while. It makes Al feel a lot lighter. He didn’t realise that was still weighing on him so heavily. Maybe he should have.

Then Christmas is over and life still goes on.

It’s the beginning of January when Al has his first success.

Well, maybe the word success is a bit strong, Al thinks as he’s staring at his own face. Then he moves the canvas—it’s a small one, not bigger than an ordinary piece of paper, using bigger ones for these experiments would honestly be a waste of materials at this point—and it doesn’t show him anymore, but the miscellaneous stuff lying around on the table behind him.

It’s a mirror. Al has painted a mirror. A mirror that works like a mirror and shows what’s right in front of him, except that it’s in Al’s familiar strokes of oil paint. It’s weird.

Al spends at least ten minutes just waving the thing around the room and watching things he’s never painted show up on it like he has. It’s fascinating and a bit disconcerting, but in the end, he puts it down again.

It’s late and Fawley is asleep, so Al doesn’t really have anyone to show it to and he already feels his excitement fading. He’s not quite sure why—he’s made an incredible thing. He’s made something that no one else has ever done before, at least as far as he knows. It’s hard to know sometimes, the magical art scene might be small, but it’s not very connected, so who knows. In any case, Al’s never heard of anyone painting a mirror that actually worked like a mirror before.

Even so, it can’t be a common thing or Al would have heard about it, at the very least while he was doing research for this.

Then again, it’s kind of understandable. Why in the world would anyone want to paint a mirror? It doesn’t really do anything that a regular mirror can’t do and those already exists and are quite easy to come across. Besides, you don’t have to deal with the inaccuracies that come with painting.

Maybe it could be useful for Al, to see what stuff will look like painted before he actually paints it, but that’ll probably only work as long as his art style doesn’t change. Al can’t imagine that the mirror will change along with him, so it’ll probably be obsolete in like, six months or something.

Yeah, it’s kind of cool, but Al can’t enjoy it like he thinks he should. It’s like all these months of work, he’s been looking for something, and now that he’s succeeded, he still doesn’t feel like he’s found it. He sighs.

It really is time to go to sleep. He cleans his stuff up and he goes.

* * *

Al shows the mirror to Fawley the next day and he acts appropriately impressed—insofar Fawley can be impressed at all. Al still doesn’t feel satisfied, but it is what it is. He puts the thing away somewhere and looks for some oil crayons instead. He’ll try to make something that can talk on something that isn’t a canvas, he decides. That’s the next step in the thing he’s trying.

He doesn’t know how he’s going to do it, because, as he told Rose and Scorpius a while ago, it ordinarily isn’t done, but he’ll figure it out. Probably. The thing with art magic being so underappreciated is that there aren’t a whole lot of people trying for new things.

Well, someone has to do it.

Someone really doesn’t, but that’s fine. Al likes art, Al likes magic, Al likes figuring stuff out, even if it’s a tedious process. It gives him something to do, something to think about, a direction that isn’t _Is Fawley dying right now?_ or even _Am I the biggest failure in the world?_

It makes him feel better. That and the whole stick about sleeping and eating and drinking water and he keeps finding that he actually looks forward to the things he tells himself he’s looking forward to and _something_ , something is different within him.

It’s stupid, because nothing has changed, really, in his environment. If anything, things have gotten worse rather than better, considering Fawley’s health, but they aren’t in Al’s brain. It’s really weird. He feels—changed. As if even the last spring as a portion of his life is so firmly in the past that Al can barely access it anymore.

Nothing has changed, but everything is different.

Everything is different, except maybe the exam period.

It doesn’t affect Al personally of course, since he doesn’t go to University, but that doesn’t mean he’s not familiar with the general vibe and exhaustion of it by proxy.

The first day after Christmas that Cath (who spends more time with her family than just Christmas day like Al does) comes back to work she looks a bit like a zombie. She starts working mechanically and Al can see her mouthing something, her words incomprehensible over the music.

 _Oh,_ Al thinks, _the autumn term is ending, right._

“Are you okay?”, he asks during a slow moment.

“Huh?”, Cath asks, not quite looking at him, instead staring into space as if space has personally offended her. Or maybe as if space holds the answers to the mystery of life and Economics 301 or whatever it is that Cath has to study for.

Al repeats his question.

“Yeah, yeah”, Cath says and promptly has to hide a yawn with her hand. “I’ve just been studying a lot. You know, exams and all.”

“Right”, Al says and his thoughts wander immediately to Rose.

Between the three of them—Al, Scorpius and her—she’s the only one that still “studies” in the conventional sense. Scorpius does research and stays on top of laws and papers, but that’s more part of his job than a learning process. And Al technically does learn things, but what he’s doing also can’t really be seen as studying. It doesn’t have a lot to do with memorising information.

Learning to be a healer is different. There’s a lot of stuff you just need to know and understand in order to make it work. It’s not really a problem for Rose, she’s good at revising and memorising, but Al and/or Scorpius have to make sure she doesn’t kill herself while she’s doing it. Rose is a bit self-destructive like that.

Looking at Cath, Al suspects that she might be the same.

But surely she must have someone that makes sure she doesn’t go crazy studying, right? Like, her girlfriend or someone.

Al hesitates.

“Is it going alright?”

Cath sighs. “I don’t know, I think so—it’s just—urgh, I wish I had a quiet place. There’s always so many damn people at the library this time of the year, I can’t concentrate with all of them around and I can’t study at home, so it’s just—urgh. Some peace and quiet would be nice.

Al nods, somewhat sympathetically. “That sucks.”

He’s in no way in a similar situation of course, considering he hasn’t had to study for an exams since he did his NEWTS what feels like forever ago, but he remember the feeling of having to study in the library or a cramped common room full of people that are panicking about the same things. It’s not a lot of fun. Al remembers enough to know that.

“Hey”, he says, and he really doesn’t know what drives him to do it, because it’s a stupid idea, really, but the words are out before he can think about it too much, “If you really want a quiet place, maybe you can come over to my place?”

There is a beat of silence.

What the fuck is he doing? He doesn’t—that isn’t—he doesn’t do this kind of thing.

He raises his head to see that Cath is looking at him.

“Seriously?”

Al shrinks away under her gaze. “I didn’t—look, it’s not super fancy or anything, it’s just, well, it’s usually pretty quiet. We’re good at quiet.”

What the actual hell is he doing? Why is he keeping this conversation even going? He sounds so stupid, Merlin, he hopes she isn’t taking this the wrong way.

“You know what, forget this conversation happened.”

Cath is still looking at him. “No, wait. Was that a genuine offer?”

Al cringes internally but forces himself to hold eye contact. It’s weird, because he didn’t mean to offer anything at all, but now that he has, he finds that he doesn’t actually want to take it back.

“I mean, I suppose? You don’t have to, though”, he hurries to add, “It was just an idea.”

Something tugs at Cath’s lip, and it takes a little, but she’s smiling a very small smile that grows bigger.

“Actually”, she says, “I think that would be really cool.” She hesitates. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

Is it? Is it okay? Al isn’t actually sure. He doesn’t usually have people around the flat. There aren’t really all that many people that could come either way. Rose and Scorpius, he supposes, but usually, they just… …don’t. It’s just not how it works. Except that this isn’t them, this is Cath, and he doesn’t really have a precedent of how anything is supposed to work.

There’s no real reason he couldn’t have someone over, though, he reasons with himself. Especially if it’s just because she wants a quiet place to study. Most of the time the flat is just a quiet place to paint for them, so that checks out. Sort of.

“I suppose I’d have to ask Alistair if he minded”, Al says, “but I can’t imagine he would.”

In reality, he’s not quite that confident, but almost. Fawley didn’t mind Al moving into his pantry without any preamble, and Cath coming around to sit quietly somewhere and study isn’t very intrusive in comparison. Besides, Fawley likes to meet people. He likes to analyse their behaviours and make cryptic comments about them. Al is sure that is at least half the reason Fawley still keeps him around.

Al should probably still ask. It’ll be fine, though. He hopes.

“It wouldn’t be a bother?”

Al shrugs. “Not to me.”

Right this second, he actually can’t think of a reason why it would be. It’s not actually that big of a thing, is it? He’s known Cath for quite some time now, it’s not like she’s gonna go axe-murderer on him. He’s doing her a favour. He’s done that before, too. Besides, he owes her. From helping him when he had his incident and then again for her help with the phone.

“Then, well, thanks? I think I’ll take you up on that.”

This time, she smiles more openly, and Al can’t help but smile back.

He bites his lip. “So like… …today?”

“I mean, that would help a lot”, Cath says, “You know, exams are pretty soon.”

“Of course”, Al says, like he knows all about that, which he really doesn’t, but Cath is not supposed to know that. He scrunches his eyebrows together, considering the logistics.

“We’ll need to get some sleep after we get off work, but you can come in the afternoon. I should be up by one or so, so you can come around then.” He hesitates for a moment. “I’ll write you down directions.”

Cath nods, looking a little dazed. “Yeah, that’s—thank you.”

Al shrugs again. “It’s not a problem.”

He sure hopes it isn’t.

* * *

What the hell was he thinking?

He doesn’t come to a great conclusion the next morning when he wakes up and remembers the conversation.

Well, morning, as always, is a stretch, because it’s half past twelve, but still.

Oh _crap._ It’s half past twelve, meaning that he has half an hour to explain what’s happening to Fawley, put clothes on and make the flat presentable to muggle eyes.

He bolts out of bed into the art room.

Fawley is sitting at the secret-project-easel (a mystery Al still hasn’t solved, but right now, he has bigger problems) and is regarding Al with a mildly curious look.

“I told my co-worker Cath she could come around”, Al rambles, “From the bar, I mean. She needs a quiet place to study and I offered, is that alright?”

Fawley puts a piece of fabric over the mystery painting, without looking at it. Instead, he holds eye contact wit Al. “Of course it’s alright.”

Al lets out an exhale. Okay. That’s one thing sorted.

He scrambles to get dressed and casts a couple concealment spells around the house. Hiding the traces of magic in their home is not as hard as it might sound, as since it’s a muggle house, there’s not all that much magic inside the flat, aside from a few magical objects and the paintings of course. Disguising them isn’t that much effort, and Al and Fawley do it with a surprising regularity, whenever Mrs. Marlow pops in for a surprise-neighborly visit, so they can both do it quite quickly and without having to think about it too much.

By the time the doorbell rings at one o’clock sharp, Al is already making breakfast-lunch for him and Fawley.

“Hello?” Cath’s voice sounds strange through the intercom, a little scratchy.

“Come in”, Al responds and presses the opener. He can hear the door open through the intercom, then he rushes off to make sure the eggs don’t burn.

A couple minutes later, there’s a knock at the door.

Al goes to open. He doesn’t want Cath to be faced with Fawley immediately—he can be a bit overwhelming when you aren’t prepared for him. Fawley, fortunately, seems to understand this, because when he gets up from the big easel where he’s finishing up the final touches of Cedric’s beautiful face, he just heads over to the kitchen and puts the kettle on.

Right. Nothing works without tea in this house.

“Hi”, Al says.

“Hi”, Cath says back. She’s packed with two bags, both of which look really heavy. Books, Al supposes.

“Come on in”, Al says, “It’s a bit messy.” He feels immediately stupid. That’s a stupid thing to say, isn’t it?

“I don’t really mind”, Cath says.

Al underestimated how strange it would be to see her outside the _Nightowl._

Okay, he needs to get his crap together and start acting like a normal person.

Al looks down at her bags again and the awkward moment passes. It does look really heavy. “Do you want some help with that?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer and just takes one of the bags and hauls it through the hall and the art room into the kitchen on the kitchen table. It’s the only table that’s consistently clean and empty in the whole flat. Everything else is more or less covered in art and/or art supplies. Al and Fawley don’t mind, obviously, but Cath will need a little space, so the kitchen table it is.

He looks back behind him and notices that she isn’t right there. He walks back out into the art room.

She’s staring.

Al looks around, panicked for a second. Did he miss any magic that’s left on display? But no, that’s not what Cath’s looking at.

“What’s the matter?”

“Al”, Cath says, “Is this your lounge?”

Al blinks. He has never considered it, but in a regular flat, this space probably would be the lounge.

“I mean, I guess? It’s where we do art.”

“I can see that”, Cath says, “It’s—well.”

“It’s what?”

“Impressive? Slightly terrifying, maybe? How do you even move through here?”

Al’s kind of forgotten what the room’s like, he’s so used to it. “Habit.”, he says, “Muscle memory. There’s a system.”

She looks back at him, her eyebrows raised in a way that Al’s oh so familiar with. “Is there really?” and just like that, the coil of anxiety in his stomach resolves. It’s just Cath. He knows Cath. He talks to Cath almost everyday. She’s not different just because she’s suddenly standing in the middle of the art room.

“Yup”, he replies, a sudden grin popping up on his face. “It’s an advanced skill. Come on,”, he says, wavering to the kitchen in front of him, “we have some room for you in there, plus, I need to make sure the food doesn’t burn.”

“Don’t worry”, Fawley says from the inside of the kitchen and Cath jumps, “Nothing’s burning here quite yet.”

They turn the corner. Fawley is standing by the stove, watching the kettle with a critical eye.

“So this is Cath”, Al says, a little lamely, “She works with me at the _Nightowl._ ”

He looks back at her, trying to figure out the appropriate way to introduce Fawley, but Fawley’s already turned around.

“I’m Al Fawley.” He fixes Cath with his always a little too intense eyes and Al feels the tension rising again. Somehow this moment feels significant.

But, just like magic, Cath smiles and makes a few steps across the kitchen, holding her hand out for him to take it. “My name’s Catherine Robinson, but Cath’s just fine. Thanks for having me.”

Fawley shakes her head. “It’s very nice to meet you. Albus says you’re here to study.”

At this, Cath’s face turns a little more tense. “Yes, exam season is soon, and Al said there’s some peace and quiet to be found here.”

“Well, we’ll do our best”, Fawley says, because he can really can only so long until he just has to say something slightly weird.

Luckily, there’s no time for it to get uncomfortable right that second because in that particular moment, the kettle starts whistling.

“That’ll be the tea”, Al says, seeing that as his moment to intervene. “I’m just making some food, do you want some?”, he asks Cath, while he’s already moving to take over the stove, putting teabags in and getting out the plates, even though the tea is ordinarily Fawley’s business.

“No, that’s alright”, Cath says quickly and Al’s not sure what it is, but something in her voice is just setting his instincts off.

He doesn’t want to say anything about it though, so he just separates the food out on three plates and gives her one before she can protest.

“I made too much anyway”, he says, because he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she actually refuses to eat it, “it’ll just be study snacks.”

Cath studies his face for a moment. In the light of day she looks a lot more tired than Al’s used to, even from their post-work chats in the backroom of the _Nightowl_ , when they’re both objectively exhausted.

“Thanks”, she says eventually.

“Yeah”, Al says and hesitates. “Alistair and I are just gonna be out there doing our thing.” He gestures at the door to the art room. “Call if you need anything or whatever.”

Cath nods, and her hand already moves to one of the bags.

Al’s almost out the door, when she calls him back.

“Al?”

He turns around. “Yeah?”

“Thanks again.” She smiles a little awkwardly and Al knows that she means more than the food this time.

“No problem.”

* * *

Al spends the afternoon drawing faces on little cards with oil crayons and growing increasingly more frustrated. There’s a reason he doesn’t like to do portraits. There’s also a reason he’s doing them right now, so he isn’t going to give up just yet, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be frustrated.

Fawley is sketching something. Cath is mumbling over flash cards in the kitchen. It’s almost comfortable like that.

It’s almost four o’clock when Fawley looks up at the clock.

“Not seeing Rose today?”, he asks and Al startles up from the newest piece of parchment he wants to throw against a wall.

He checks the clock as well. “Oh, crap, I totally forgot. She’ll be waiting for me.” Al hesitates, eyes alternating between the clock and the kitchen door.

He probably shouldn’t leave Cath alone in the flat, because she’s his guest and that’s just plain weird, but on the other hand, if he doesn’t show up, Rose will come looking for him and as far as weirdness goes, that’s almost infinitely worse.

He sighs and gets up to go in the kitchen. Cath looks up as he comes in.

“Hey”, he says, “I need to go see Rose for a bit so she doesn’t think I’m dead in a ditch somewhere, but it’ll only be like, half an hour. You can leave if you want, but if you just want to stay here, that’s fine, too.”

Cath squints a little, like she’s just waking up from some sort of trance.

“Rose”, she says, “your cousin, the doctor?

Al is kind of impressed that she remembers that. “More like a med student, but yeah. She—” He hesitates. “She worries a lot.”

It’s not a very obvious thing to say, or even one that makes a lot of sense in the situation, but Cath doesn’t ask.

“Okay, I guess I’ll just” She gestures around the table. Books and notes are scattered all over it.

“Yeah”, Al says, “You won’t even know I’m gone.”

When he goes to fill a fresh glass of water for Fawley before he leaves, he brings her one, too, without thinking all that much about it.

* * *

Cath leaves not long after Al comes back, claiming she still has stuff to get done before work, which is the evening shift, not the late night one for once, but after some slightly awkward shuffling on both of their parts, she comes back the next day to study again.

This time Al is a little more relaxed, which makes it all a little easier. It also makes him more susceptible to notice just how tired she is. Too tired. It makes him want to say something, but at the same time, he feels like that’s, well, like it’s just too much. Like he’s peering into something he’s not allowed in, something that he shouldn’t be able to access. It’s not his business and making it that would be reaching. Crossing boundaries, perhaps. And as much as the whole thing itches under his skin, he won’t do that. Al knows about boundaries, has so many boundaries himself, he can’t find it in him.

He’s careful instead. Offers food again, in a casual way, like it doesn’t matter, which honestly, it doesn’t, because he’s making it anyway, so it isn’t a big deal.

He wonders if that’s how it feels sometimes, for Rose and Scorpius, to be dealing with him.

He must be doing something right, though, because Cath still comes back the next day. 

It’s on that third day that she actually falls asleep on the table. Al only notices because it’s his scheduled time of the hour to get a glass of water for everyone. When he comes up to hand her hers, he notices that her head has fallen on her book and she’s drooling on the pages.

Al squints to see what she’s reading.

He doesn’t understand the first three words and decides it’s ultimately pointless.

It does leave him with the question of what he’s supposed to do now, though. He can’t exactly just leave her there, she’ll ruin her entire back. He doesn’t want to wake her though, either. She’s been running around like a bit of a zombie for the past couple of days and she obviously needs the rest. There’s no point in studying if you can’t see straight, Cath must know that, too.

He sighs. He should get her somewhere more comfortable.

He considers his options for a moment. A couch would be ideal, but they don’t really have anything like that at the flat—there’s really no room for it in the art room, and if they want to sit down, they just do it around the kitchen table. Sleeping happens in beds.

If Al doesn’t want to leave Cath right there, he’ll have to take her to his bed.

That thought is… …uncomfortable in a way he doesn’t really care to examine, but not quite as uncomfortable as she’ll be if she just continues to take a nap on the middle of the table.

Well, Al will just have to deal with that, he supposes.

He takes a minute to study her form, trying to figure out in what way he could possibly her across the art room without waking her up.

The verdict is—well. Al’s not a very tall man. He’s aware of that and usually he doesn’t care, but in this case, it is a bit impractical, seeing as Cath is definitely taller than him. For all the running he and Rose have done in the past few months, he doesn’t actually have that much arm strength. Which leaves—

Al silently waves his hand in front of Cath’s face a couple of times to make sure she’s actually asleep, then he calls his wand in his hand silently.

The levitating charm he puts on her is just as silent—just a matter of caution. But even as Cath floats in the middle of the kitchen, she doesn’t stir. She really must need that sleep.

Al carefully directs her higher with his wand, then through the door to the art room.

Luckily, he hasn’t unlearned how to do this kind of thing—he used to have a reason to practice, but nowadays they don’t do it a lot with Scorpius anymore. Back in Hogwarts is was the only option sometimes. Old castles don’t mix well with disabilities. Now, not so much.

It was never ideal anyway. Being hexed, even in the least malicious way possible doesn’t mix all that well with Magical Exhaustion Syndrome, and there is something about being floated around by your friend to achieve basic mobility that just doesn’t make you feel great.

It won’t harm Cath, though, at least as long as she never finds out about it.

He senses Fawley raising his eyebrows across the room, but actually looking isn’t worth potentially breaking his concentration before he’s maneuvered Cath across the room safely into his bedroom.

The landing is a bit rough and Al winces at the squeaky sound his mattress makes. He stands there, frozen for a second, but Cath doesn’t move.

Al takes a deep breath and steps closer. Carefully, he arranges her limps in a somewhat normal position, her head on the pillow. For a moment he considers wrapping her up in his blanket, but then decides that’s probably too much. He’s already testing his luck here, so he just backs out of the room slowly.

Only when he closes the door quietly, he starts questioning his life choices again. He looks down at the wand in his hand.

“That was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

“Not the stupidest either, I assure you”, Fawley says charitably, startling Al.

He turns around. Fawley, who’s apparently almost as unconcerned with keeping magic a secret as Al is, is comparing the details of the two Cedrics on the different easels in front of him.

“She fell asleep on the table”, Al says as a way of explanation, “I couldn’t just leave her there.”

“You could have woken her up”, Fawley says.

“You’re just arguing with me for the sake of arguing”, Al says, and he knows he’s right when Fawley doesn’t argue that point.

“She’s a really nice girl, isn’t she?”

Al feels himself tensing up. “You’ve barely talked to her, you couldn’t know.”

He’s aware that he sounds a bit ridiculous, but there is just something about the whole situation that makes him very, very uncomfortable.

“Doesn’t mean that she’s not a nice girl. Besides, I don’t need to talk to her to figure her out a little.”

Al feels some of the tension ease. He knows that part of Fawley, disconcerting as it is at times. “Do you even realise how creepy that sounds?”

Fawley, as a rule, likes watching people. He likes meeting people, asking them a few cryptic questions and putting together the little clues of their behaviour like a puzzle. It’s a little uncomfortable at times, but by now Al’s seen it so much he’s not all that bothered by it. It’s not like it’s a crime or anything.

“Well, you know that she’s nice, don’t you?”

Al shrugs. “Of course she’s nice.” Because Cath is. She’s nice and decent and obviously hardworking.

“So I’m right then.”

Al shrugs again and this time, maybe he’s the one who argues for the sake of arguing. “There are lots of people that are nice, it’s not that hard of a guess.”

“If you say so.”

They’re quiet for a moment, and maybe they’re about to return to talking about how to make art talk, but Al can’t let that sit. There’s something about this that he can’t just leave there in the room, even if it’s only potentially.

“You’re not—“, Al says, and feels very ridiculous, because he’s suddenly very aware that what he means isn’t ‘something’ he knows exactly what it is, he just doesn’t know how to phrase it because the very indication is just so—well, wrong in his mind. He doesn’t want it to be there, but he wants it in Fawley’s even less and the thought that it might be—

It’s just those stupid clichés in dump books that put things in people’s minds.

Crap, he hopes it doesn’t put things into Cath’s mind. Obviously it wouldn’t, but what if Cath thinks that it’s putting things in Al’s mind? Or, maybe actually worse, what if Cath thinks that Al thinks it’s putting things in her mind?

He shakes his head violently to himself. _Don’t overthink it._

“You’re not inferring things here that aren’t happening?”, Al says and immediately cringes. That’s maybe the worst way to say it, if it even makes any damn sense at all.

Fawley, as usual, seems mildly amused by this. “I never infer things that aren’t happening.”

Al knows for a fact that that’s not quite true, but whatever. He’s not in the mood for that kind of game.

“I mean—you aren’t inferring anything at all here?”

“I don’t infer things”, says Fawley, “if there aren’t any things happening.”

“Well”, Al replies, “good, because there aren’t.”

There aren’t, and that’s the thing, there really aren’t. But Al has a feeling that if there were , he would probably be saying the same things. If he were Fawley, Al saying these things wouldn’t keep Al from inferring anything. That’s just how subtext work. The fact that it isn’t in the text is what makes it subtext.

Except that sometimes there’s no text and there’s no subtext.

There’s just Cath, who’s in love with her girlfriend, and Al, who’s in lo—in something with Felina and he’s doing Cath a favour by letting her study here. Also, he doesn’t want to mess up her back.

It’s not a big deal, because Al knows that’s how it is.

It’s just—the idea that someone else wouldn’t know, that someone else might think—something, for whatever reason, makes him feel slightly nauseous.

Suddenly, it seems very important. But the more he talks about it, the less believable it seems. It’s like a vicious cycle.

“I know”, Fawley says, and his voice changes a little, sounding a little more serious suddenly, a little more kind, like maybe he knows more than Al. He probably does. Fawley always knows something. “I told you, I’ve been figuring her out a little.”

There’s a small pause and Al feels the tight ball of sudden discomfort and weirdness dissolve a little, even if he still doesn’t quite get where it’s even coming from.

“Besides”, Fawley continues a little unexpectedly, “I like to think I know you well enough that I can tell certain things.” He hesitates for a moment, adopting Al’s manner of explaining it. “When they are happening—and also when they aren’t.”

“Yeah”, Al says, “okay.”

Because what else is there to say to that.

* * *

Al’s just about finished a new rendition of Rose in oil crayons on a relatively small piece of parchment, when a panicked noise comes from his bedroom.

In his concentration, he’s completely forgotten that Cath was, well, still there, so for a moment, thoughts about home intruders and rapid self-defence have his wand in his hand within seconds. Well, looks like that NEWT in Defense wasn’t completely for nothing.

Then he remembers and quickly puts the wand away, before he rushes inside to see if she’s alright. Somewhat belatedly he realises that there could still be home invaders, just that they wouldn’t rob his room, but possibly assault Cath, which honestly, would be so much worse.

Luckily, that’s not what’s happening.

What’s happening is that Cath is jumping of the bed, looking like she’s seen a ghost. Or maybe a home invader.

“I—Is everything okay?”, Al asks. He’s slammed the door open in a bit of a dramatic entrance.

Cath looks at him, her hair all messed-up from sleeping. She’s blinking frantically.

“You—I’m—” She swears thoroughly. “What time is it?”

Al checks his pocket watch. “Almost seven”, he says and the panic in Cath’s eyes makes him add: “It’s fine, we’re not working today.”

“We’re not—No, I know”, Cath says, as she’s already flurrying past him, almost running into a box of paints as she makes her way to the kitchen like she’s being chased by a herd of foxes with rabies.

Al follows her just fast enough to watch her shove her books into her bag, almost violently.

A page gets scrambled up and almost tears up and Cath pulls the book out again, swearing even harder.

“Uhh”, Al says, very intelligently, “Can I help you?”

Cath doesn’t exactly answer. “I need to go”, she says instead, “I really need to go.”

The first bag is full and she swing it over her shoulder, except that she doesn’t quite succeed in that and it splatters over the floor instead, almost knocking over a chair.

Cath stares for a moment, then throws her hands in the air as if they’ve personally offended her.

Al uses the moment to get on the floor himself and save the poor books.

Cath comes down to meet him.

Her fingers are shaking, he realises and when he looks up at her face he can see that her eyes are watering. It’s disconcerting to see, to say at the very least. Al is so used to her being, if not calm, at the very least collected, put-together and just a tiny bit sarcastic. She’s one of the people who have their life together in a way that Al’s almost sure he’ll never achieve. But right now…

“Hey”, he says, and he’s not quite sure where this is coming from, because Al usually can’t figure out what to say to people in the best of circumstances. He puts one of his hands on her shoulder, the way Scorpius always does with him and he can feel her shiver under his grasp.

“Cath”, he says. “Take a deep breath.”

To his immeasurable surprise, she actually does.

“Good”, he says, “great, one more. You can do it.”

Cath takes another breath and Al almost thinks she’ll get up, get her stuff and walk out like nothing’s happened.

Then she starts sobbing.

Al panics for a hot second, then he realises that he doesn’t have time for that. He follows his instincts instead and puts his arms around her in the possibly most awkward hug of human history, but whatever. What does it matter, it’s not like there’s anyone there to judge them.

Cath, somehow seems to crumble even further. _Maybe I’m doing it all wrong_ , Al thinks, but at the same time, he can’t make himself actually let go. He somehow knows that that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

He searches his brain for things to say, for something to make it better, but he doesn’t even understand what it is that’s happening and the only things he can come up with sound like lies. Al’s never liked people who just tell him he’s fine, when he’s clearly not or that things are going to be alright, when, actually, nobody can know that. Maybe that’s pedantic, but Al’s not hypocritical enough to subject Cath to the same stuff.

So he just doesn’t.

It doesn’t take long for Cath to let go. Al isn’t sure if he’s surprised by that or not. Mostly, he just feels awkward, but at the same time, he just wants to make sure that everything’s alright. Another stupid thought, that. Obviously it’s not.

“I’m sorry”, Cath says and Al still doesn’t know what to say, so he just hands her a tissue.

She takes it and cleans her face with it absently.

“How—what even?”

“You fell asleep over your books”, Al supplies the explanation, because that’s the least he can do, “I figured you would be more comfortable somewhere that’s better for sleeping, so I brought you to my room. I hope that doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”

He really does fucking hope that, because he knows that she has enough people doing that by the—well not exactly be the daily, but at least the weekly at work—and he doesn’t exactly want to add to that.

Not even to mention all the other weird feelings he has about this kind of thing, for some reason, and he doesn’t want to be thinking about who’s inferring what or who might be thinking that anyone’s inferring anything, but there’s at least a tiny part of his brain dedicated to exactly that task. Al chooses to ignore it.

“I—“, Cath says, blinking hard, “You should have just woken me up! I don’t have time to sleep—I need to—and then—I needed to study some more, I can’t just and there’s so much more—”

_Oh._

Well, at least that’s the kind of crisis that Al can understand.

“Cath”, he says, putting the hand on her shoulder again. He isn’t sure if that actually helps any at all, but he’s willing to try. “you just took a little break. That’s alright. Sometimes you have to take breaks. You were really tired and you fell asleep. Sometimes we need sleep. It’s only human.”

“Well, I don’t have any time for that, you don’t even know Al—”

Al takes a deep breath. “I know, I don’t really know, but no matter what you have to do, you can’t do it well when you don’t take any breaks anyway. Maybe you’ve lost a couple of hours here, but that just means you can work better now. Your batteries just needed some recharging. You can go much farther with a full battery.”

At another time he might be proud of himself for using a muggle metaphor.

He watches her take another deep breath. Al takes one along with her. He’s so hoping he’s saying the right things.

“Do you really think so?”

Al blinks, surprised, but recovers just as quickly. “I don’t just think”, he says, “I know.”

He doesn’t feel half as confident as he’s trying to sound, but he figures that his own insecurities and struggles won’t help her right now.

“Whatever it is”, he adds, “You can do it. You can work it all out.”

Cath looks him directly in the eye. Al can’t figure out what she’s thinking, but she’s already taking another tissue.

There’s a change in her face and she’s back like the Cath Al knows. Al isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be relieved or spooked.

“Right. Right.”

She brushes her face with the tissue another time.

“Is anybody worried about you?”, Al asks.

He suddenly gets why Cath was so reluctant to leave him alone after his sudden outburst back in December. It’s not the same situation, obviously and Al doesn’t even really know what the situation is, if it’s the stress of university or something else or maybe both, but still. He’s terrified by the idea that she might leave in a—in a state, for lack of a better word—and get hurt or something.

Also, there’s this whole thing about how people get worried about you if you just disappear randomly—Al might have learned a lesson about that at some point.

Besides, if she’s so upset about staying here late, she might actually have prior commitments, people who are waiting for her.

“Anybody waiting for you somewhere?”

Cath lets out a little huff, but there’s not much humour behind it. Considering the situation, that’s probably too much to ask, anyway.

“Nobody that would remember I was coming”, she says, her voice quiet and bitter, Al isn’t actually sure he understands it properly.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, I just—“, she sighs, deeply and somehow all the haste from before seems to have left her. “I guess it doesn’t make a difference for today.”

It’s kind of what Al tried to say before—that missing out on a few hours of work or whatever isn’t the end of the world, but the way she says it makes him wonder if it’s actually a helpful thought in her head.

“Still”, he says, wondering if he’s being too much, reflecting his own struggles on her, “maybe there’s someone you should give a heads-up that you’re okay? Like your girlfriend, maybe? Sally?”

Maybe he really is reflecting his own problems on her, what with his lesson about making people worry. But that doesn’t mean it’s not true. And then there’s Fawley of course. If he just didn’t make it home on time one day Al is sure he would flip his script and maybe go a little insane until he heard from him. He realises that he’s being a bit extreme there maybe, but still.

All in all, he’s doing a great job, just putting all of his own neuroses on Cath when she probably has enough of her own problems to deal with, but he can’t help himself. He’ll have time to feel bad about it later.

Cath sighs again. “Sally's not gonna be worried about me just yet.”

She doesn’t elaborate.

 _Oh. Okay, then_.

It might just really be Al’s own stupid head that worries about things like that.

“Are you going to be okay?”, he asks, without the permission of his brain, because what kind of question is that to ask, how does he even expect her to answer, what the hell is he supposed to do if she says no, but Cath just nods.

“Yeah, of course” and at this point she actually manages to smile, “I’m always fine.”

It’s a sentence that Al doesn’t trust, knows in his gut he can’t trust because a sentence like that just can’t be true no matter what you tell yourself at night, or maybe even more importantly, in the brightest day, but he also doesn’t know what else to say to that.

“I hope it’ll all turn out okay”, Al says, eventually, because he does, but it’s also just about as much optimism as he can muster because, personally, he really prefers not to think about that part, it only freaks him out.

“Thank you”, Cath says, somewhat suddenly, “for letting me come here and stuff.”

Al just shrugs, feeling helpless in a way that he doesn’t quite understand. “I owe you like three hundred favours, so…”

Cath grimaces. She suddenly seems so normal again, so much like always. “Well, consider them paid back, I suppose.”

She takes another breath. “I really need to get going, now.”

“Yeah”, Al says, “Try to get some sleep and have some good food and stuff.”

Maybe he shouldn’t say things like that like he has his life together, because he definitely doesn’t.

She pulls another grimace and Al isn’t quite sure if she’s taking him seriously, but at least she doesn’t seem offended. “Couldn’t we all use some of that.”

“I suppose so”, Al says, “Good luck on your exams.”

“Yeah”, Cath replies as she steps through the door of the flat, “You too.”

Right. She doesn’t actually know anything about his life, just like he doesn’t know anything about hers. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget.

* * *

Cath doesn’t come back to study after that. There are two or three more days before exams, but Al doesn’t see her during that.

She’s been smart enough to take a little time off during exam week and the few days right before that or maybe they are already marked as free days in her plan, he isn’t quite sure. Cath works a little more than Al does, as far as he knows, but she still isn’t fully employed. That, on top of studies, would probably be borderline impossible.

The whole thing makes him kind of uneasy, even though he knows that, to some degree, what he witnessed is completely normal. Exams are a stressful time. Cath can’t be the only person ever freaking out about them. Merlin, Al knows that Rose would probably do it on a regular basis if Al and Scorpius didn’t have a semi-official but still quite elaborate system of keeping her sane.

So yeah, it’s probably fine. Doesn’t mean that Al can feel that way about it.

He does what he always does and distracts himself with art.

Honestly, there is enough frustration there.

“Don’t take this the wrong way”, Fawley says one day when Al is close to actually pulling his hair out, “but why are you even doing this to yourself?”

“What do you mean?”, Al asks. He’s so tired of damn portraits, the prospect of holding a confusing conversation about vague, artsy principles with Fawley almost seems appealing.

“I mean I didn’t want to say it, because the process sometimes is a mystery”, Fawley says, being only half on his bullshit today, “but do you really need to be painting faces?”

“Faces are all _you_ paint.”, Al replies defiantly, even though he knows that’s not what Fawley’s playing at at all.

“Not true”, Fawley says, “I also paint backgrounds. And I sketch other things.”

Al knows this to be true, but still. “Backgrounds don’t count”, he says. His tiny portraits don’t even have one. It’s not worth the effort. “And you know what I mean.”

“You know what I mean”, Fawley retorts and sure, maybe he’s right, but Al doesn’t want to talk about it.

Al sighs. “I just need to do it”, he says, because maybe somewhere in the back of his brain he knows what he’s trying to do, but he can’t let himself think about it yet. If he tries to think about it, he’ll just overthink it.

So, for now, what he’s doing is painting pictures of his friends on pieces of parchment and feeling frustrated about the lack of progress. He’s managed to make most of them move in some way, but the rest of the results are somewhat subpar.

Portrait-Scorpius, for example, reacts to Al talking to his by hiding her face behind the book Al’s painted him with, but he doesn’t actually respond. Al’s not sure if he can’t speak or if he’s just painted him too shy, but it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do either way.

Portrait-Rose definitely can’t speak, but she keeps moving her lips like she can, so Al can somewhat lipread her words. Al isn’t even sure if that’s progress at all.

There’s also a portrait-Lily who can actually talk, but none of it are actual words that make any sense, rather than just random sounds, which, honestly isn’t much of an improvement.

“It’s easier on a canvas”, Fawley tells him time and time again, but Al knows that.

“You can make sketches talk, too”, he says in turn.

“Yeah, every once in a while”, Fawley says, not unkindly, “but you’re not me. Besides, they still don’t turn out as nuanced, personality-wise.”

Al doesn’t care all that much about personality. That’s not the point of this.

Al is trying to paint people that are close to him, his friends, his family. The theory is that his knowing them so well should make it easier, the same way Fawley makes himself familiar with his subjects to paint them better. Al isn’t sure if it works.

Well, maybe it makes him hate the things a little less. It’s harder to hate something that has the face of someone you love.

Al has just finished the very not-satisfying portrait-Lily and he’s wondering who he should do next. For a moment he considers Fawley, but the thought makes him strangely self-conscious.

He knows that while his little portraits aren’t technically terrible, they certainly aren’t, well, good. If they were, Al thinks sourly, maybe they would work. It doesn’t actually bother him that much. Rose and Scorpius and Lily and his parents will never actually see those portraits, really, they are just there to be practised on. Fawley, of course sees them all, in every stage of the process. Al isn’t sure if he wants how he sees the old man be so closely examined by the man himself and it’s even worse because Fawley is an expert on portraits. Painting him like that, so imperfectly—it’s just awkward.

So who does that leave? James would be the logical next choice, obviously, after his friends and his sister, but he doesn’t seem quite right. Al’s feelings about James are so complicated, there’s no way that’ll make the magic come easier.

There is a person that has made the magic come a lot easier in the past.

Al’s fingers who had been thrumming on the table suddenly stop.

Felina.

He hasn’t thought about her in quite a while, which means he thinks about her all the time, in an absentminded way, when he studies his Italian or feels the outline of the piece of paper in his back pocket, because he still carries that with him of course, and there are the—feelings.

But he hasn’t actually considered her in quite a while.

Felina, who is in Italy, doing whatever the hell she does in winter and fall spring and when Al isn’t with her. Al doesn’t know, but she’s still there and Al—

A lot of things have changed since last summer.

The realisations drops heavy in his stomach.

Al presses his eyes together for a moment. Then he takes out a new piece of parchment and determinedly starts sketching the outline of his brother’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this chapter and I'm excited to hear what you think!  
> (Honestly, none of you know where any of this is going. I don't think you could guess--you're welcome to try though!)


	14. nobody said it was easy (no one ever said it would be this hard)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al struggles with loyalties, priorities and a whole lot of guilt.

Over the next days and weeks, Al struggles with his conscience.

It’s not a new thing, technically, he’s done enough borderline shitty things in his life to be used to the feeling, the knowledge that what you are doing isn’t quite right, while going ahead with it anyway, trying not to think too much about the implications.

This is different, though.

For one, this is something that actually counts. Something that, he feels in his gut, might follow him around for his entire life, if not physically, then at least spiritually. One of the big regrets of life. That kind of thing.

Al doesn’t really have any of that, but he suspects that isn’t so much because he’s never made any mistakes, but more because he doesn’t quite know how he could have done it better. There’s the time where he just ignored everyone around him without noticing, of course—certainly a regret, but not unfixable. He hopes. He’s been trying to fix it, anyway, and he feels like it has been working for the most part.

What really makes this different though, is that he usually walks into disaster—or at least mildly questionable decisions—with a seeing eye that he tries to keep shut as closely as possible. It doesn’t usually work, that’s why it’s still a seeing eye, but that’s not the point. The point is that usually he knows that he’s doing something stupid, he knows that he’s making a bad decision, he knows what the right thing to do would be. He still ends up eating a suspicious-looking Bertie Bott’s Bean and regrets it when it inevitably tastes like frog spawn (a very unfortunate taste that Al only recognises because of an even more unfortunate potions lesson).

But this time, he doesn’t. Both options are bad.

Al knows that he can’t go back to Italy. He’s not stupid, he can’t leave now, he can’t leave anymore. It’s not even about how stupid he’s been acting before, but so much has changed and he just can’t—not anymore.

What if Fawley has an episode? Who will take him to the hospital? Who will answer his call? Who will even notice?

Al is painfully aware of the situation every time he leaves the house, but just going away for three months, that’s on a whole different level. He won’t be in a position to help. It could take ages for him to even catch on that something has happened, even if someone else is around and notices right away. No, leaving just isn’t smart anymore, not responsible, not the right thing to do.

But not going—the thought alone leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

It has something to do with wondering and missed chances and words never spoken that he is bound to regret, but even more than that, it’s about being an asshole.

It’s not—They haven’t made any promises, him and Felina, they’ve barely even talked about it properly, and maybe Al is taking this way more seriously than he should and maybe Felina won’t even show up at the wall this year, maybe she’s moved on to another small town somewhere to different tourists or even a different—that’s not the point. The point is that Al knows how he would feel if he were to come to the wall and she wasn’t there.

Or maybe he doesn’t. He would feel—something. Sad. Disappointed. Rejected, maybe. He struggles to name his feelings like that. It doesn’t seem right to say the words like this, it’s like he’s assuming something that’s never quite been defined out loud.

Well, that’s another thing to regret, he supposes. If he had something, a definition, a word, then he would be at least able to grasp just how bad it is exactly. The thing he doesn’t want to do.

But it doesn’t matter, really, does it? Because deep in his gut Al knows that leaving things just like this isn’t right, can’t be right, because even if there haven’t been definitions and words or rules and rights, explicitly, there was something, there _is_ something, maybe, implied at the very least, that doesn’t feel right to just leave.

It doesn’t feel right. Nothing feels right. Everything feels wrong. Whatever he does, he’ll be wrong.

The two sides of arguments war in his head for a few weeks and every time Al stops to try and consider it rationally, it just spirals into a tornado of regrets and jabs at his own stupidity.

If he just had a way to contact her! He could have painted her a portrait—two portraits—and they could have talked that way. That would have even solved her weird obsession with not being able to be traced by owls or anything else that could have gotten a message to her. Al’s never even asked about that properly. There’s so many things that he’s never properly asked.

That’s because he’s taken them for granted, he supposes. He’s taken Fawley for granted for sure, the thought that the man might not be there anymore at some point didn’t even cross his mind. Well, now it’s not a distant possibility anymore but a likelihood he can’t ignore. He should have thought about this way before, he could have been prepared, he could have foreseen this situation.

But he didn’t. And now it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s in a dilemma of his own making.

 _In the end_ , he thinks as he stares up at the very dark ceiling of his room one night, _it comes down to who is more important._

 _Not more important,_ he corrects himself. It’s about who he’s more indebted to, about who he can live with letting down more.

The real answer is neither of them, because if Al had been asked this a year ago, that’s what he would have answered, but back then the question would have been a hypothetical. But now it isn’t. And now it isn’t even about what he wants or actually about his feelings at all. Hypotheticals don’t matter.

The decision’s already made that night, staring into the darkness of the undecorated ceiling of what used to be a storage room with a spare bed in it. A room that Fawley gave to Al when he was still a stranger, lost and young and a little desperate. Funny how much everything can be the same, three years later, even if it all has changed so much.

The decision’s made. It takes a few days to admit it to himself, but it is.

He’s not sure if Fawley can see the quiet argument Al holds with himself as it’s happening. Or if he can, if he guesses at what it’s about. 

Al hopes he doesn’t, on both accounts, but honestly, that’s not very realistic. Al has enough self-reflection to know that his face isn’t exactly a fortress for his feelings, at least not where Fawley is concerned. Sometimes it feels like Fawley’s actually reading his mind.

Al knows that he isn’t—he knows just enough about legilimency to know that’s not how it works.

Still, as the weeks progress and summer comes closer and closer, Al hopes that, for once, he can struggle with this in silence, somewhere where Fawley can’t see. It would only make it harder. Al doesn’t want to make it harder, not on either of them.

After all, despite everything or maybe corresponding to it, life never stops.

Cath has that pinned on her study planner. Al noticed when she came to study. How true. Also kind of depressing.

The one-sided study-sessions at the flat haven’t had a repeat performance. Al hopes that’s because Cath has found a better quiet place and not because she’s embarrassed about falling asleep and being stressed out.

Either way, they settle back into a comfortable routine of mutual night shifts and light conversation to make said shifts pass easier.

She does tell him about how her exams went a couple of weeks later, though (swimmingly), so Al can stop worrying about whether he’s made it awkward or not. 

Al is so relieved, he startles a little when she asks him about his own exams. 

“Don’t have the results yet”, he mumbles, to keep her from asking any detailed questions he wouldn’t be prepared to answer.

It’s true, anyway, in a way. He doesn’t have results yet, for whatever it is that he’s doing. He’s not sure if he’ll ever have results, but that thought doesn’t help, is too uncomfortable to keep in his head, too close to attachment that he pushes it away. He can’t deal with it right now.

Rose and Scorpius do notice it, the tension when someone makes him talk or think or plan for a few months ahead, but if they attribute it to anything but Al’s regularly reoccurring jitters about the future in general, they don’t say anything. It’s quite reasonable to assume it’s that, to be honest. Al doesn’t like planning for the future, Al doesn’t like changes and new things. He prefers not to think about it. So maybe the mark isn’t too far off. It’s just a little more complicated.

It always bloody is, it seems.

He still tries to get over it. Push it aside, maybe, but only half-heartedly, because he’s half-admitted to himself that it won’t work, so only the oblivious stubborn part of him is still really trying. The rest of him has kind of resigned itself to its fate.

Still, he tries to be normal about it. He doesn’t want Fawley to catch wind off it.

* * *

One night, or rather one morning, coming back from a gruelling night shift, he’s feeling particularly honest with himself. Maybe he’s just to tired to pretend.

 _It probably wouldn’t be the same decision if I was there,_ he thinks. _Maybe I would just stay there forever._

And he might be tired, but he isn’t tired enough not to feel bad about it. He feels bad about everything. It’s too hard, so he just goes to sleep. At least he’s tired enough for that for once.

* * *

“So when are you going to leave this year?”, Fawley asks over tea.

Al almost drops his cup. Maybe, in hindsight, he thinks to himself, dazed, he did want Fawley to catch wind of it.

“Excuse me?”

He uses his sleeve to clean up the splatters of tea that have gotten on the table from the sudden movement. Fawley doesn’t seem all that bothered.

“I said ‘When are you going to leave this year?’”, he repeats, patiently.

“Leaving where?”, Al asks, because maybe Fawley is talking about some kind of appointment Al has forgotten or something, but—

“Wherever you want, I suppose”, Fawley says, “You know, to travel? Explore the world? The thing you do in the summer?”

Al’s insides burn with a complicated mixture of shock, horror and shame.

Shame is maybe the biggest part, because Al certainly hasn’t used his summers to explore the world. Well, he did see France the first time around, he supposes, but he definitely hasn’t been doing whatever Fawley’s imagined he has.

And now he never will—because that’s the thing. He won’t. He can’t. He knows that he can’t and Fawley must know, too. Fawley probably also knows that Al really wants to, which is the other thing Al feels ashamed for—that and the realisation that there was never any point in hiding these feelings anyway. Fawley knows. Somehow, Fawley always bloody knows.

“I’m not doing that this year.”, Al says and does his best to keep his voice calm and steady. He’s not sure how successful he is. He isn’t prepared for this conversation. He didn’t think there would be a conversation. Really, he should have known. It doesn’t actually make sense for them not to have it. But Al didn’t even consider it and now he’s not prepared. But it’s happening.

Fawley raises an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

Al wants to throw his hands in the air, but he doesn’t.

“You know why.”

Something crosses Fawley’s face. “That’s not going to be enough.”

“What?”

“As a reason. That’s not going to be good enough.”

Al can’t help himself anymore. He stands up from his seat.

“What better reason could there be?”, he asks and this time his voice definitely isn’t steady, is shivering like a tiny boat in a storm. Al has to muster up all his energy not to let it break entirely, because then he might turn into the ocean instead of the boat and let it all out through his tear ducts. He doesn’t want to do that. Not where Fawley can see it. Not where anyone can see it, if he can help it, but maybe he can’t.

Fawley doesn’t waiver under his look. “One that has something to do with you and your future. And not this.”

He doesn’t specify the this, but Al knows what he means anyway.

He presses his lips together. _The future._ What a terrible, terrible joke. Al doesn’t want any part in it. He doesn’t want a future. He wants this, he wants what he has right now, and he doesn’t want it to fade away.

He’s known that for a while now. He’s also known for a while now that other people don’t really get that, that they pity him for it, dismiss it as a silly frenzy of a little boy that doesn’t know what he wants. Not that Al isn’t that boy. But he just never thought that Fawley, of all people would make him feel like it.

He can’t be here.

“I need to go”, he says, short, clipped, because he isn’t sure how many words he has left before the tears will take over. He grabs his phone from where it’s sat next to the charger on the kitchen counter. “Call me if you need me”, he chokes and then, for the first time in years, he disapparates.

-

Al doesn’t apparate a lot, for the simple reason that it makes him quite violently sick. It’s a little bit better when someone else is doing it and Al is just going side-along with them, but on his own, things usually get a little ugly.

That’s why, twenty seconds later, he’s throwing up in Rose’ and Scorpius’ toilet. Maybe not exactly ideal, but at least it’s not the floor.

“You should really invest in some good warding”, Al says, when his stomach has stopped revolting.

He looks back at Scorpius, who’s stood in his own bathroom in his pyjamas, wand raised and eyes alarmed.

“Oh”, he says, “Al.”

“Yeah”, Al says and almost has to laugh. It’s a funny situation, if not one he probably could have predicted, considering that he just integrated from thin air in someone else’s flat in the early hours of the evening, even if that someone else is his two best friends.

The funny moment passes and the gaze in Scorpius’ eyes changes from surprise to relief to worry.

“Did something happen?”

And Al doesn’t really know what to answer.

“No”, he says, but in the same second he isn’t quite sure if that’s even true. “I mean, not really. It’s just—” He sighs. “Fawley and I had a disagreement and I got upset.”

He still is. Or maybe he’s starting to be again, now that his thoughts are going back there.

“Oh”, says Scorpius, and he sounds neither empathetic nor judgemental, more like he doesn’t really know what to do with that.

A sudden feeling of discomfort overcomes Al. Maybe he shouldn’t have come here.

“I can go again”, he says, already grabbing the door handle, “I wasn’t really thinking when I left…”

“No!”, Scorpius says, and then quieter, “no.”

He’s leaning against the towel rack and Al automatically scans the room for where his friend has left his crutches.

That’s when Rose pops her head in the door, too.

“Oh”, she says, much in the same tone as Scorpius just a few seconds before, “Al.”

“Yeah”, Al says again.

Rose doesn’t seem nearly as surprised as Scorpius does.

“Do you want to talk?”, Scorpius asks tentatively, like he’s not sure if it’s the right offer to make. Al can’t blame him. Al’s still not exactly known for his amazing ability to share his feelings, even if he’s gotten a lot better.

He doesn’t really want to talk now, either, but it’s not in the same chest-crushing, throat-restricting way it has been in the past sometimes, and experience, unfortunately, has taught Al that he probably should, even if he doesn’t particularly feel like it. It doesn’t always help, but a lot of the time, it turns out to be kind of unavoidable. Better to get it over with.

Al sighs. “I’m not disturbing your evening plans, am I?”

Scorpius and Rose look at each other.

Al realises, that, living together, he doesn’t actually know what their routine is in any great detail. It’s kind of startling, because growing up they’ve always been in the same place, so it’s weird to be aware of the fact that he doesn’t know all the tiny details of their day-to-day lives anymore. Even if it’s only natural.

“Not really”, Rose says, “Not like we have a lot of plans, anyway.”

She smiles at him and the disconnect instantly disappears. Still Rose. Al still knows her, no matter how much things have changed. Maybe he knows her even better than he used to, can understand certain things that he can’t quite quantify.

“Let’s move this to the lounge, alright?”, she offers and summons Scorpius’ crutches with the flicker of her wand.

It’s not a very far distance to move. Rose and Scorpius have lived in this flat since the summer after they graduated Hogwarts and the size of the flat corresponds with that. There is just enough space for Scorpius’ wheelchair to get through all the doors and make all the corners, which, honestly, architecturally speaking, is a big step-up from Hogwarts.

Al hopes that they won’t move out for a while. He likes the flat. He isn’t sure what it is, but there is just something about it that says _Rose and Scorpius_ in such a simple, comfortable way nowhere else ever has. And there have been times where they all thought such a space might never exist, so coming here—it’s like a comfort. Maybe even a promise for Al himself. He doesn’t quite know what it promises, but that’s fine.

Al and Scorpius settle on the small couch, while Rose takes the armchair.

A book is set face-down on the armrest, like she’s just put it down there. She probably has.

Rose and Scorpius look at each other, again, a moment of mutual understanding and silent conversation and maybe if Al weren’t so used to them, or to existing in the space between them, maybe he’d be annoyed bit it, but as it is, he isn’t.

“So”, Scorpius starts, because talking still involves actual speaking and someone has to start. “You had a fight with Fawley?”, he prompts.

Al sighs. The word sinks into his bones, settling there.

“Not a fight”, he corrects, because it isn’t, “A disagreement.” He pauses for a moment and neither of his friends fill that pause. “He wants me to leave again.”

He sees the confusion in the crunches of Rose’ forehead before she even voices it. “Leave where?”

“Like for the summer”, Al explains, “Remember, like I did last year?”

Scorpius and Rose exchange a look.

“We remember.”, Scorpius says, but it sounds like he means more than he’s actually saying.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Al”, says Rose.

“He can’t tell you to do things”, Scorpius adds, quite resolutely.

Al huffs. “Umm, yes, actually, he can. I don’t know if you remember, but he’s like my boss, in case you forgot.”

“Yes”, Rose says, her voice strained, “but that doesn’t mean he can just ask you to do anything.”

Al doesn’t really know what she’s getting at. It’s obviously true, but he doesn’t really see how it applies here, so he just waits for her to elaborate, but it’s Scorpius who explains.

“It’s not reasonable of him to ask you to just drop your whole life and leave the country for a few months to do—whatever the hell you are supposed to do, it doesn’t matter. It’s too much, mate. Is he even paying you for that?”

Al blinks. He suddenly has the impression that Rose and Scorpius are having a very different conversation than he is.

“What exactly are you talking about?”, he asks trying to keep his tone careful and confused rather than accusatory, because he actually doesn’t have a clue what’s going on.

“Last year.”, Rose says, like it explains anything, “He made you leave Lily’s graduation to just go—somewhere for like three months—no matter how good or brilliant or whatever he is, you can’t let him push you around like that.”

Al’s brain needs a few seconds to catch up to their thought process.

_Oh._

That’s—Al actually kind of forgot about that. It was such a big deal at the time, but now it feels like it barely matters.

“Oh—that—he just said that because I was freaking out and being stupid and I couldn’t deal with the thought that you would all hate me for disappearing off the face of the earth, he was doing me a favour, honestly, that’s so not the point—the point is that he’s sick and something could happen at any damn moment to make it worse and I need to be here to look out for him, because—bloody hell, you were at the hospital, you know. There’s no one else that will do it, he doesn’t have anyone that’ll check on him, it’s just me, but somehow—”

“Wait”, Scorpius says, interrupting Al’s rant, “What?”

“I know”, Al says, and he can feel his voice getting thick with emotions again. This is so stupid, why can’t he just discuss this damn thing rationally, like a sane, emotionally stable person. “It’s terrible, but I really don’t think there is anyone else that cares. And he’s helped me so much, more than you guys even know, I can’t pay him back for that, ever—”

“No”, says Scorpius, “I mean”, he backtracks, “of course that’s bad and stuff, but can we get back to that other thing for a second? About you freaking out?”

“We already talked about that, didn’t we?” Al says. He’s getting a bit annoyed. That’s really not important right now, is it? Then a burst of the anxiety that initially accompanied the whole thing returns. Who’s to say that Rose and Scorpius can’t hate him for that now, even if it happened almost a year ago? Or anyone else, for that matter?

“Listen”, he says, and he can hear his voice getting a little too shrill and a little too fast, “You remember how I was not doing great? I actually realised that at Lily’s graduation, but I couldn’t deal with it, so I just left. Obviously that was less than ideal, but when I came back I was really worried everyone would hate me for disappearing and stuff, so Fawley just told everyone it was his fault. I kind of forgot about it by now, but I’m so sorry I did that, I don’t even know why, I’m never doing it again and I shouldn’t have lied about it, I just—I’m sorry, okay?”

He's talking too fast again.

There’s a beat of silence.

“Alright”, says Rose, “Time for me to drastically adjust my view of the situation.”

It sounds so funny, Al involuntarily starts to laugh. It takes him a couple of minutes to collect himself again.

“Sorry”, he says eventually, “Weird emotions.” He pauses. “You’re not gonna hate me for that now, are you?” The burning buzz of energy is back that makes him almost not want to ask, lest it all gets even worse, even if, somewhere in his mind he knows that this won’t be the end of years of friendship.

“No”, they say immediately, and in sync.

“I don’t even know—“, Scorpius starts, but he doesn’t finish the sentence, just shakes his head instead. “This is a rollercoaster.”

“Just don’t do that again?”, Rose says.

“I know”, Al says, “I wouldn’t—it’s different now—I’m different now, I know better how to—how to cope with stuff.”

Rose nods, like it’s a fact, but Al isn’t so sure as he says it. Sure, he feels different, but what is it that he’s doing right now? Coping? He’s not sure. He feels like a damn mess, nothing else.

“Okay”, Rose says, “Let’s just—let’s just focus on the issue, right? If I understand it correctly, Fawley wants you to leave for the summer and you don’t want to go, because you’re scared to leave him alone, because there’s no one else who will take him to the hospital if he has an attack.”

“Yes”, Al says. He’s breathing a little easier now, even though they’ve done nothing to solve his problem. Maybe it’s because Rose can lay it out so clearly, it doesn’t feel as confusing anymore when she wraps his rant into calm, neat words.

“What exactly does he want you to do?”, Scorpius asks, “Like, why does he even want you to go away? What would you be doing? Are you supposed to do anything specific?

Al feels his cheeks colour.

“I’m supposed to travel. See new things. Have experiences.”

A new wave of guilt overcomes Al as he says it. That is what he was supposed to be doing. It’s not really what he has been doing. Not even what he wants to do, if he’s being perfectly honest.

If he could go just one more time—that wouldn’t be—well, maybe it would. Just so he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about it.

It also feels a little like a lie, burns like one in the pit of his stomach. It isn’t, because that’s what Fawley’s supposed to do, it only implies that it is what he has been doing. Not a lie. Doesn’t change the feeling, though. He pushes it away. He doesn’t want to talk about Felina tonight, too. There are only so many confessions he can stomach in a night. And Felina isn’t his to talk about, anyway.

“Okay”, Rose says and it isn’t quite clear if she means that she understands or that she really doesn’t.

“Well, that’s Fawley’s idea. He thinks it’s really important or whatever. To make good art and stuff, you need to see different things, that’s what Fawley thinks.”

“Is he wrong?”, Scorpius asks, and Al throws him a look, because devil’s advocate isn’t really what Al’s looking for here, but Scorpius seems genuinely interested, so Al stumbles for an actual answer.

“Well”, he says, “I mean, not really. It kind of forces you out of your bubble and a lot of art is a little about that. And. You know. Learning more things, having different experiences—it helps with being empathetic, too. That’s another thing that’s kind of important.”

Scorpius hums in response.

Al brushes his forehead with his hand. “But that’s not really the point. I get it, really, I even agree, but I just can’t do that kind of thing anymore.”

“Because Fawley is sick”, Rose finishes the sentence.

“Yeah”, Al says, “I mean—yeah.” He wonders for a moment if he should feel guilty about that, or at least about saying it so plainly in Rose and Scorpius’ faces, but he can’t bring himself to. He knows that he’s right. He’s not happy about it and there is plenty of regret there and even a little something like resentment, but no real doubt.

“Well”, Rose says, “He’s been fine so far, hasn’t he?”

Al nods. “Yes, but you know how it works. He could have an attack at any time, and it could get so much worse, especially if he doesn’t get any treatment right away.”

He looks at Scorpius next to him. “It’s not the same as with you. It won’t stabilize. It’ll just gradually get worse.”

“It could be years”, Scorpius says.

“Or it couldn’t”, Al says. He swallows. “And if I’m not there to look out for him—there’s nobody else. He could—he could die and without me—it might be that nobody even notices for a week.”

He swallows again, and this time it feels hard and painful. Tears are burning in his eyes again and he doesn’t look up to face his friends again, keeping his emotions in check instead.

“So I can’t go”, he concludes, “I can’t leave. I can’t.”

There’s a thick moment of silence.

Al doesn’t look up to see their faces. It almost feels wrong to have said so much at all, like it’s a violation or something. Of his own privacy of Fawley’s he’s not quite sure.

“But you want to?”

It’s Rose who breaks the silence and not at all how Al expected her to.

He looks up, the burn in his eyes temporarily suppressed by his surprise.

The look on Rose’ face is hard to read, a mixture of compassion and worry and maybe something else that Al doesn’t quite have access to.

“I—I—why do you say that?”

He looks at her, then at Scorpius, but he doesn’t offer anything to contradict her.

“Give us some credit. We’ve known you for a while, you know.”

Al shrugs helplessly. “I mean—still, I—” He sighs.

He can’t talk about Felina. He doesn’t want to leave things like this, yeah, but—well, it’s not a productive train of thought. He has a responsibility to Fawley, way more than he has to her and—it really isn’t a productive train of thought. He’ll spend forever feeling bad about this, won’t he?

“But it doesn’t matter”, he concludes, because he really doesn’t want to think about this more, and he really, really doesn’t want them to ask. He isn’t sure he could explain if he had to try. “I can’t go, you get that, right?”

Rose and Scorpius are looking at each other again, and this time, Al does feel kind of annoyed with it.

“What?”, he says, exasperated.

Scorpius and Rose share another glance and this time it is Scorpius that raises his voice. “I know you’re really fond of him, Al, but, you know, you have to make a decision there—”

“I know!”, Al says, because he does know, he’s been agonising over this for weeks now, quietly contemplating every last detail and possibility, playing out every argument his friends could possibly come up with and he _knows_ , “I already have! Forever ago, this isn’t—he’s not just my employer and my landlord or whatever, he’s my—he’s part of my—” _family,_ he wants to say, but stops himself at the last possible moment. He’s said it in his head, and to strangers, but he can’t say it in front of his friends, in front of Rose, who’s actually related to him and Scorpius who’s—well, it feels worong to say he isn’t.

“I’m telling you, he doesn’t have anyone else to look out for him, you saw it at the hospital, nobody else even came to visit. He needs me and I—he’s been there for me so much, you don’t even understand—I owe him so much—”

Something in Scorpius face twitches at that. Al can’t even be bothered to ignore it, this time, because it’s not even remotely important anymore and it feels like so long ago anyway.

“Oh, shut up” Scorpius hasn’t said anything, but still, he doesn’t have to, Al can read him at least as well as the other way around. “You don’t even know half of it. He’s the one who made me see you guys and my parents every week, and he’s kept an eye on me when I wasn’t doing all that well, and I don’t even know where I would be without him, honestly, the only thing I ever do for him is sort through his damn mail.”

“I’m sure that’s not true, Al”, Rose says, but that’s not really something Al wants to be reassured of right now.

“Oh, it might as well be—I do his damn mail and I cook sometimes and do groceries or whatever, but that’s more or less so I don’t feel bad. I try to—I try to make sure he’s okay and safe and stuff, but I can’t really—he doesn’t let me at all. It’s like—he just ignores that anything is wrong at all, he acts like nothing has changed, like it’s irrational for me to even consider it—you know what he said—he said that wanting to stay to look out for him is not a good enough reason. Not a good enough reason! What the hell else would be a good enough reason?”

That’s when he has to take a deep breath. Ranting, again.

Rose has that look on her face again.

“You can’t force people to accept your help, Al”, she says, her words weighing heavily as if there’s an echo to them. There probably is.

Al still doesn’t want to hear it. “Well, I can sure as hell try!”

There’s quiet again.

“Well”, Rose says, “I might have an idea.”

Al’s face snaps back up. He has no clue in what way she can solve this at all, he has already played through all the scenarios over and over again, but he’s desperate. As much as he doesn’t think there is a solution, he desperately wants one.

“What if you went”, she starts.

Okay, no he’s changed his mind. He doesn’t want to hear it at all. He turns his face away and has half a mind to just get up and leave, the same way he did back at the flat with Fawley, except now, he doesn’t really have any other place to go to anymore.

“No, listen”, Rose says, “Hear me out. What if you went, but we—Scorpius and I could check in with Fawley, right?”

Al looks back at her, his scepsis clearly written across his face.

“You have that phone, right? To keep in contact with him if there’s an emergency? We could take that, and he could call us, and he would be just as safe, we’d get him to St. Mungo’s right away. And we could check in everyday.”

Al still isn’t convinced, but the words are starting to get in his head and infiltrating his resolve. It’s taken so much strength and heartache and courage to make this decision. He wants to hang onto it, but at the same time, he still wishes he didn’t have to make it. It isn’t fair and as much as he tells himself that he’s fine with that he really isn’t. But he can’t allow himself to not be. Rose’ calm reason does, though, allow him that, and something about that makes him unravel a little.

He doesn’t want that guilt, that regret. He doesn’t want the wondering, the insecurity. He wants to a bottom line, a final point. He doesn’t want to leave things the way they are. He doesn’t.

“I… ….would you really do that?”

“Sure”, Rose says, clearly seeing that she’s getting through, “We would, right, Scorpius?”

Scorpius mumbles his agreement hastily. “Yeah, sure, of course.”

“I—“ Al knows that Rose just wants to help, wants to make things easier on him, offer him another option, but—a new wave of emotion overcomes him.

He can’t—he doesn’t—he shouldn’t even be considering this! If he were a good person, he would—well, he doesn’t know what he would do, but that’s probably the first thing. If he were a better person he would know what to do. If he were a good person there wouldn’t be this kind of mess.

Somewhere in his mind something tells him that he’s being unfair, that he’s not responsible for everything that’s happened. Fawley being sick has nothing to do with him and Felina’s mysterious hang-ups about any kind of communication that isn’t in person isn’t really his fault either. But his brain has plenty of counter points, so these arguments are drowned in them quickly.

If he were a good person, he’d just be able to convince Fawley to let him stay here. If he were a good person, he would have done the travelling thing properly from the start. If he were a good person he’d be able to handle romance normally, and everything wouldn’t be so damn confusing and difficult. If he were a good person, he wouldn’t keep getting himself in situations where both options are kind of shitty.

Al buries his head in his palms.

“I don’t know what to do—I—how do I even know what the right thing to do is?”

Neither Rose nor Scorpius seem to have a proper answer to that.

He’s just filled with this flood of bad.

“Why do you want to go?”, Scorpius asks.

Al flinches internally, but he knows it’s only reasonable to ask.

“There are some things that I have left—that aren’t quite sorted out—I just—I don’t want to leave them—actually, I don’t think it would be right to leave them either—it’s hard to explain.”

He sounds like a mess and he knows it.

“You don’t wanna say, do you?”, Scorpius asks.

Al looks at him. “You’re being unusually confrontational today.” Unusually pushy. Al’s not even mad as he says it, just surprised, mostly. Scorpius doesn’t push Al, not ever. He’s coming close today.

“I’m sorry”, Scorpius says immediately, “I just—I wasn’t sure if I was reading you wrong.”

Al almost has to laugh, not in a happy way, but not quite in a bitter way either. It’s somewhere in between, in the comfort of an old friendship that fits like a well-worn sweater, even if Al can’t make himself be the friend he should be. Just another thing to feel guilty about, he supposes.

“No”, Al says, “You aren’t—I” He’s not ready, he doesn’t know how to talk about something that has been so separate from his normal life for so long, that it’s somehow behind a big wall in his head now that seems impossible to get through. But that’s not all there is to it. “It’s not really my secret to tell.”

“I see”, Scorpius says and Al can’t tell if he does. He doesn’t even know what there is to tell from what he’s said.

“Come here”, Rose says suddenly and opens her arms. Al leans into the hug automatically, and is almost startled by how comforting it feels. This is Rose. Well-worn sweater of friendship indeed.

“I’m sorry”, he says and now he’s crying again after all. How do they even still put up with him when he’s always such a cryptic mess that never ever talks to them at all? “I’ll explain—I’ll explain soon, I promise—I”

He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. He’s trying. He really is. Trying to be better, trying to get his life together, trying to not be a bad friend. Sometimes it feels like all he’s doing is piling up a hill of guilt and failure.

Rose sighs into the embrace.

“Just try to be safe, alright?”

* * *

Al sleeps on their sofa that night. He doesn’t want to apparate again and potentially throw up on a painting in case he doesn’t make it to the toilet. Actually, he doesn’t want to throw up at all, he neither has the energy nor the sufficient contents to his stomach to throw up anymore. He’s also too emotional and tired for Scorpius and Rose to trust him to wander the city so late at night.

Al chooses not to mention that he’s wandered the city at night in possibly worse emotional states before, but they probably know that. They’re still right. Al doesn’t really trust himself to wander the city at night right now, either. Besides, he’s really tired, and they have a comfortable sofa, even if it is somewhat early for him to go to sleep at one a.m..

Before he slips under the fuzzy blanket and closes his eyes, he gets the phone out of his pocket, carefully composing a message to Fawley.

_Staying at friends. See you tomorrow._

He considers adding something like _Don’t worry_ or Rose and Scorpius’ names, but it isn’t like he really has any other friends anyway and typing the letters out on buttons that are really only meant for numbers is a pain. Al knows that he could call, but actually calling would mean to have a conversation that he isn’t ready for. He’ll face that tomorrow. But he doesn’t want Fawley to need to wonder again, to worry about where he is, so he sends the text message.

When Al wakes up, he feels confused and shaken, still somehow raw from the emotional turmoil from the previous day mixed with the dizzy feeling of a messed-up sleep schedule.

It’s quite a long walk back to Fawley’s flat and Al could probably take the tube, but he doesn’t. He uses the air and the monotone motion to clear his head.

Rose and Scorpius would look out for Fawley for him. The thought seems crazy in his head, not because of the idea itself, but because he’s never even remotely considered it. He was so caught-up on the idea that there isn’t anyone else doing it, that the thought that he could ask someone to never even crossed his mind. It’s like a revelation or something.

 _That doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, though, does it?_ Al tries the thought on in his head for size. Leaving, the very idea of it, still seems wrong. He can’t just go. He’s attached to his life here in a way that he wasn’t before, for reasons he isn’t sure he particularly wants to examine. He’s not restless anymore. He doesn’t want to be away, to be anywhere else.

But it would mean that he could go back. Get answers. Closure maybe, though he doubts that. Closure seems like to big a word for a lost little person like him. But he could say goodbye at least, know that it’s the last time. He could explain. He wouldn’t have to feel so guilty.

The relief that floods him at the thought is so intense it’s almost scary and Al shuts the imaginary scene down right away. He’s not sure if he’s quite successful.

He walks down an entire street with just that sitting in his head.

He doesn’t want to make this decision.

It’s not really a big revelation, but somehow it still feels like one.

Now that the tides have changed, he, again, has an inkling that somehow he already has decided, that somewhere in his brain he already knows, the same part of his brain that knows what he’s trying to accomplish with the badly talking crayon portraits.

Yeah, his favourite brain drawer. To never be opened unless absolutely necessary.

He’s not ready yet to unpack it. He doesn’t want to.

He’s kind of scared that Fawley will make him.

He still gets out his key and opens the door and walks up the stairs to the flat, because he lives there and his entire life is there and he doesn’t want to explain to his parents why he’s moving back home. Because they would definitely assume things. Wrong things. And that would be even more harrowing than Fawley forcing him to talk as soon as he comes in.

Al doesn’t know what to say yet.

Fawley doesn’t force him to talk as soon as he comes in, because when he comes in, Fawley isn’t awake. Al takes a look at his watch and almost has to laugh.

Of course he isn’t. It’s barely half past seven. Fawley’s never awake around this time. Neither is Al, for that matter, it’s closer to the time he usually goes to sleep. Last night, sleeping at Scorpius and Rose’ at a somewhat regular time has really messed up his sleep schedule.

He considers briefly going to sleep anyway, just to get back into what he usually does, or maybe to spite someone, he isn’t sure, maybe himself, but ultimately, he decides against.

He’s not sure it would work anyway, and while it sure would be nice to escape the pressure of existing for a while the way one can while sleeping, it isn’t really worth waiting out the silence until the storm that is his thoughts calms down enough for him to actually fall asleep. There are easier ways to shut off the self-aware, overthinking part of his brain. Kind of.

Al allows himself a big sigh and gets out the crayons.

* * *

They don’t fight it out. They don’t calmly talk it out, either.

Al is acutely aware that Fawley is fully prepared for it to happen, is probably waiting for it, in fact (he’s not quite sure why though, since it’s absolutely in Fawley’s power to just start it at a random time like he usually does with those things) but Al tries his hardest to avoid it.

He doesn’t want to talk about it.

He’s aware that it’s not really a helpful mindset in this situation, considering that just waiting and ignoring it won’t really work. He’s going to have to do something. He knows that, too, but that doesn’t mean he wants to have the argument.

He can’t have the argument. The reasons for this are also safely tucked away in that same drawer in his brain, but as it is, he just can’t. It’s something about the way Fawley’s looked at him in that first fight, or maybe the way he’s said future—no. Drawer closed. Drawer firmly, completely shut.

He can’t have that argument, so he just… …doesn’t.

He makes up his mind quietly on his own.

“I’m going to give my phone to Rose.” This is how he tells him. “In case anything happens, you have to promise me to call her.”

Fawley doesn’t even need a further explanation to understand what he’s talking about, even though it’s been almost a week. He’s quick like that.

“Alright”, he says and it actually sounds like he means it, so maybe some parts of Al’s so loud concern over the past year have been getting through to him. Al’s almost surprised. He’s not sure what reaction it is that he was counting on. Fawley is getting what he wants, after all, more or less.

“I’m going”, he says quickly, suddenly feeling uncomfortable—well, uncomfortable in a different way than before, “but it’s the last time. No more next year.”

It’s the other condition. Two conditions. Al’s promised himself, if Fawley doesn’t agree, he’ll stay, no matter what the man has to say about it.

“You’ll get your stuff sorted”, Fawley asks, pointedly neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

Al feels himself blush. Surely, he can’t know about that, can he? No, that’s impossible. He wants to ask, but that would give away more than it could possibly tell him. 

“Yes”, he says, because he doesn’t feel like lying either. “That’s what I’m always trying to do.”

“Fine”, Fawley says, “Fine, then. It can be the last time.”

Al nods and gets back to examine the portrait-James in the making.

He doesn’t care to think about whether or not he’s agreeing to this because it is the best option, because it’s the easiest, or because it’s the one that doesn’t require him to fight.

He’s not sure which one it is, but whatever it is, it probably makes him a bad person.

Nothing new, then. He just hopes it doesn’t make a whole new mess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! Even a little earlier than I thought! I hope you enjoy this chapter, I'm excited to hear what you think!


	15. the things we said (sounded true)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al travels distances, gets some answers and makes more slightly questionable life decisions than usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even if magic was real, that probably wouldn't work in real life. Please suspend your disbelief, people.

The thing about going to Italy, or perhaps more accurately, the thing about going to see Felina, is that as soon as he’s on his way, the world seems so different. As if the two places—the small town where the two of them meet every summer, and the loud, lonely city of London where Al spends most of his time don’t operate on the same plane of existence at all.

Whatever happens in one of them doesn’t quite carry over to the other one, only lives on as a faint copy in Al’s head that has left him wondering often enough if everything he’s gotten up to in the summer is just some kind of wild and absurd dream. It’s not, obviously, and he has his sketches and paintings to prove it, but that doesn’t change the feeling.

The broom ride is longer than Al remembers it being. Maybe it’s the kind of mindset he’s in—emotional, exhausted, trying to forget his probably bad decisions—then again isn’t that how he’s always been feeling when he was leaving for the summer?

Still, it’s longer now, more exhausting, more grating. Even the wind in his ears isn’t quite enough to shut the sound of his thoughts off.

Maybe he’s just getting old.

This time, he’s made sure it’s a halfway decent time when he knocks on Paola’s door. When he sees her face, he’s genuinely surprised how happy he is to see her. 

She offers him food and his room is ready for him, but she also sasses him for his clothes and the rings under his eyes, so that’s fine. She’s not different at all, a strange contrast to everything else that’s been going on in his life. Maybe people don’t change all that much anymore when they’re that old. Or maybe Al just doesn’t know her enough to tell. He wonders if she can, with him. She doesn’t say anything that would give him a hint. But maybe that in itself is a hint.

 _It would really have been a shame_ , he thinks to himself, _if he’d never gotten to say goodbye._ And he even almost doesn’t feel guilty for the thought.

* * *

He goes to find Felina the next morning.

He walks through the town almost absent-mindedly, checking all her spots one after the other. He knows the tiny streets almost as well as his usual routes in London by now, it doesn’t take all that much brain power to find his way.

So he’s looking, yes, but mostly he’s trying to figure out how he feels. What he’ll say to her.

It’s so different now that he knows he won’t be coming back. The cobblestones, the colourful sunshades, the familiar buildings—they seem more vibrant and more intense, but that’s probably just an illusion. Al used to think that this place didn’t know time—so removed from everything else that is always going on, things here never seemed to change at all.

Now they feel almost as surreal as they always were in his thoughts — still faraway and a bit dream-like, like he’s not even really back here seeing them with his own two eyes.

When he’s wandered all the familiar spots without seeing her, he idly wonders if he should have been concentrating a bit more on the looking rather than the thinking. After a second, he figures that if she was there, he would have seen her, even if he was a little distracted.

Surprisingly, he’s not all that upset about the idea that she isn’t there yet. She’ll come. He’s not quite sure why he’s so sure of that now when he never has been before, but he is. Meeting her has never been a precise art, he won’t panic about it. She’ll show up. She always has before and besides, she l—she’s fond of him, too.

Maybe that’s the first sign that the dreamworld is breaking apart. Maybe the first sign is that it doesn’t seem as fragile anymore.

Dreamworld isn’t quite gone yet, though.

* * *

“Good business this year”, Paola says as she brings Al his tea. It’s kind of nasty compared to Fawley’s usual kind, nevermind the fancy stuff they sell at the _Nightowl_ during the day, but even that tastes nostalgic now. Al would never dare bring it up with the old woman anyway.

It does make him think of Fawley though, and the anxiety in his chest spikes up again. Despite all his insistence the past couple of weeks, even he knows it’s kind of irrational. Fawley’s been fine the entire time since the first attack and there’s no real reason for that to change right now. Even if it does, Rose will be able to help him, probably a lot better than Al could anyway. And he does trust her. It still feels wrong that he isn’t there.

He wonders if he should send a letter. Maybe. Probably.

He suddenly realises that he hasn’t really answered Paola yet.

“Uh, yeah, lots of people here so early in the season.”

There are. Which makes it kind of strange that she’s still hanging around talking to him. Surely she has better things to do.

 _He_ doesn’t, really, he just needs to go look for Felina again. Maybe ask a few people about her. She’s usually quick to gain a reputation once she comes around town. She’s a good fortune-teller, if only because she’s a real one.

On that note—

“Paola”, Al asks, “Have you seen” He hesitates. _Felina,_ he wants to say. _Have you seen Felina this year yet?_

But he can’t. Felina’s not Felina’s name. It’s just a nickname. As far as Al knows, he’s the only one who calls her that. It’s an uncomfortable thing to think about, but it’s true, there’s no way around it.

“Have you seen the Black Cat?”, he asks instead, “Il gatto nero?”

He’s gotten good enough at Italian that he can almost hold conversations now, as long as they aren’t too quick and stick to topics he knows about. That makes it easier to remember Felina’s alias in that language, too.

“There are many cats in the streets”, Paola replies idly, in Italian as well, and for a moment Al is proud of himself for understanding her so well, but then he realises what it is that he’s saying.

“No, I mean—”

But Paola shushes him. “Don’t go around spreading nonsense, boy.”

Al doesn’t have an answer to that, but when he walks around town that day, he refrains from asking about Felina again. Something, call it instinct or maybe it’s just paranoia, warns him not to.

For better or worse, Al usually trusts his instincts, so he doesn’t ask.

It’s probably stupid but—yeah, he doesn’t. He wanders around all day, again, and when he starts getting restless, he starts making his way back to the wall, where they’ve met before so many times.

In a strange and, for him, unusual showing of rationality he didn’t freak out about not finding her yesterday, but something about Paola’s word has made him anxious. Felina’s always been so elusive, adamant not to be pictured, not to be contacted, not to be—not to be what? Not to be found, maybe. But Al’s always been able to find her so easily, so that can’t be it, right?

He’s still thinking about it when he arrives at the wall. He sits himself on it like he has so many times before. He doesn’t have any art supplies with him today though, no plan to draw out the pretty colours of the sunset. It’s kind of a shame. It’s really pretty.

But so is everything here. Al can almost pretend that that’s the reason he’s so drawn to this place, but it isn’t. He does try not to lie to himself so much anymore these days.

Something cracks in the stones on the floor next to him and then there is the weight of another person setting down on the wall to his side, too close to be just an accident, someone else resting on this stretch of the universe by chance.

“Hi”, he says, turning his head. It’s a small word for what’s maybe not quite such a small occasion, but there have only ever been small words between them. Al isn’t sure if that makes it easier or harder.

“Hi”, Felina says back, looking him right in the eyes, “You came.”

She says it as if it was in question and for a moment Al forgets that it actually was, that he had decided not to come until other people convinced him otherwise. Right now, it feels inevitable, like there was never a different option.

“Of course”, he says, because in that moment, he believes himself that.

Felina smiles. She’s still so damn pretty, at the very least as pretty as the sunset before them. The soft light only enhances it.

She inches a little closer until their thighs touch and she can easily put an arm around his back and across his shoulders. Al returns the gesture, watching her face, searching for—he isn’t sure, something. Change, maybe.

He’s not sure if he finds it, but Felina does look older. Or maybe just exhausted, it’s hard to see.

“I’ve been looking for you”, Al says quietly, “today and yesterday.”

He feels her nodding against his shoulder more than he can see it. “I know.”

“Have you been around?”

She hesitates. “Not really, but—I mean, I heard you were here.”

Al nods. He doesn’t really have any more words for that, but he’s not sure he wants to talk anyway. It’s often like that between the two of them—when he’s at home, he keeps thinking of all the things he should ask and tell her, everything they should talk about, but as soon as they are together, all of that just falls away.

Maybe he just wants to enjoy being able to have this for a moment.

Maybe Felina’s thinking something similar.

“Hey Al”, she says, “For today, can we just go to sleep?”

Al doesn’t have any objections to that.

* * *

Being here is usually a pretty big disruption to Al’s sleep schedule, meaning it tends to resemble more the one of a regular human when he’s here than when he’s at home. It has a little bit to do with Paola’s idea of a respectable lifestyle, even when on vacation—and to be fair, for all the trouble she’s had with him, Al kind of thinks it’s her right to have an opinion that—and a little bit more to do with how Felina does things.

Her sleep schedule is kind of tied to the times tourists are around (which is technically at all times, but still, fortune-telling is in highest business during the day and in the evening, not in the dead of the night) and, just in a general way, she isn’t messed up like that in the way Al is. So during summers, Al almost sleeps like a normal person.

He still has quite a lie-in, usually.

That’s why it’s a surprise when Felina shakes him awake the next morning.

Even as his eyes blink open, he can tell that it’s early. The light that’s coming in through the small window of his room is soft in a way it only gets in the early mornings, like Al only knows from walking home after the late shift at the _Nightowl_ in London. It’s also not really hot yet, just pleasantly warm, that should probably be the biggest hint.

He yawns, and it sounds loud in the quiet room.

It takes a moment for his brain to put the pieces back into place, to reconstruct what’s happening, but it doesn’t quite work.

Felina’s sitting up next to him on the tiny bed they’ve shared overnight—it’s really only made for one person, but neither of them is especially fussy about those things. Maybe it comes with being a street artist, Al thinks, but that doesn’t really explain why he’s like that too.

“Is something happening?”, is the first thing that comes to Al’s mind and he asks it, not bothering to have much of a filter yet. His voice still sounds sleepy and he knows that his hair must be more of a mess than usual, but it doesn’t make him feel to self-conscious. As with the bed, it’s not going to be such a big deal to her and besides, she’s seen it before. Al’s not very good at making himself look cool and non-awkward even when he’s trying rather hard.

Felina gives a soft hum in response.

Al sits up, to look at her properly, to see her face.

 _Everything feels so different here,_ he thinks for maybe the millionth time, because every time he’s here, it just is. Everything shifts a little right up until he’s halfway back over the Channel and he can see things the usual way again.

He knew this would happen. He thinks, in the back of his mind, he kind of feared it, but it’s hard to remember it now.

He remembers a little when he sees her face. In the morning light she looks even more exhausted than last night, her glorious, beautiful face seems drawn in itself.

Al touches her hand, unsure if she’ll push him off, but she doesn’t.

“Felina”, he says, because he needs to say her name that isn’t even her name again, like it grounds them and what they have into reality, “Are you okay?”

She shrugs, and the line of her mouth tightens, but her fingers curl a little around his.

“I—“, she starts, and Al can see her struggle with words like he does himself so often. He hasn’t seen her like this a lot, just tiny glimpses in the way she tells people who take pictures of her off and doesn’t tell anyone her name. But it’s different now, so out in the open, tangible almost, rather than a shadow in her presence, barely visible.

With a flash Al realises that he’s not the only one who’s different. Time here doesn’t stop, either, however Al might feel about it.

“I can’t stay here”, Felina says. It seems like the words come with great difficulty.

Al blinks. “You mean in this room? I don’t think Paola particularly cares about that—”

But she’s already shaking her head.

“No, I mean, this—here, the town. I have been here for too long—too many summers.”

“I—“, Al says and he feels like he’s understanding something, somewhere, maybe in that drawer in his mind, but he doesn’t quite know what. “Let’s go, then”, he hears himself say.

Felina is still looking at him, blinking very slowly. It occurs to Al that she might be close to tears.

“It’s alright”, he says, even though he’s most certain that it isn’t and he doesn’t like when people say that kind of thing to him, but he can’t help himself. He doesn’t know what else to say. He wants it to be true.

“Let’s go”, she echoes.

Al tries for a smile. “We can go on my broom.”

At that, Felina almost smiles.

* * *

Felina waits in his room while Al goes to tell Paola he’s leaving. She doesn’t look particularly surprised about this, which should probably raise a few questions, but Al doesn’t really care to think about it right now.

As he hands her her money—it’s not a lot this time, he hasn’t been here for very long at all—she takes his hand in hers for a moment and looks into his eye.

For a moment, Al thinks she’s going to give him a lecture about sunscreen and wearing hats and making sure to drink enough water, but she doesn’t.

“You are a good boy”, she says instead, in her broken English again. “I hope you will be happy. Good luck.”

It sounds more of a farewell than anything she’s ever said to him before and Al realises with a start that that’s because it is.

Felina is not coming back here this summer, that much is clear. And Al is not coming back after this summer at all, not for a long time, probably, so for him and Paola, this is it.

He blinks a bit too hard and swallows. “Yes”, he says, somewhat nonsensically, “Thank you for—” His voice breaks and he gestures around wildly, hoping she understands what he means, even if he’s not quite that sure himself. But she’s been good to him, he knows that much, and he certainly has something to be grateful for.

She makes a dismissive sound. “You will need luck and help a lot more than just from me.” She pauses for a moment, but before Al can ask or even think about what exactly that means again, she talks again. “Don’t forget to wear your hat.”

“Never”, Al vows.

* * *

Felina is still weirdly fascinated by Al’s broom, which makes their whole escape, if it can be called that, feel a lot less strange than it actually is. It feels a little like they are still playing, exploring yet another type of magic together.

Al tries to keep thinking of it like that as they take off.

Neither of them really knows where they’re going.

 _That makes it an adventure,_ Al thinks, except, really, he doesn’t think that at all. Sure, people who go on adventures might not always have a specific goal, but neither do people who are running away.

Al doesn’t let himself think about what they are running away from.

He might have, really, if there wasn’t something about that whole thought, the whole business of running away, that unsettled him so much. Something about the thought that going somewhere without any goal, fast, is just something of an escape just doesn’t sit right with him. Then again, running away is probably unsettling to most people. He can’t think about it, so in the drawer it goes, along with all the questions he probably should have.

For a while at least.

They don’t move very fast the first couple of weeks, spending entire weeks almost in the same places, though all of them are outside of Italy. They go to Switzerland, then to Austria, to Hungary, Croatia, the Czech Republic. Their route doesn’t make sense in any way at all, but that’s fine. Al isn’t a fan of routes that make a lot of sense.

It is, in a way, amazing. They are kind of doing what Al was always supposed to do on these trips and he has to admit, he kind of gets why Fawley insists on the idea. There is something about seeing so many places that makes your imagination go wide and your art go places it hasn’t quite been before.

Also, it’s just really nice and interesting.

They end up in all kinds of places, big cites and small mountain towns, touristy places as well as those where nobody ever actually expects any stranger, but wherever they go, they make sure to see the most interesting things they can.

Felina still works, but not nearly as much as Al’s been knowing her to do. It just isn’t as easy if you’re leaving town all the time, he supposes, but then he remembers her saying that she usually doesn’t stay that long, anyway, so maybe she’s just trying to enjoy this, just like he is.

And he is. Most of the time. And the rest of the time, he’s trying really hard, but there just is—well, they are running away, and even besides that, there are a lot of things to feel guilty about.

He feels guilty that he planned not to show up at all, because no matter how vague and mysterious she always acts, Felina has clearly been waiting for him, counting on him, trusting him to show up even. And he almost didn’t. It almost doesn’t make sense now, standing next to her, because how in the name of Merlin could he even have considered that? But then he remembers Fawley and he feels guilty all over again, because really, he shouldn’t be here, or at least he shouldn’t be able to enjoy it at all, after all, something could be happening to Fawley right while Al’s eating ice cream and having fun. Just when he’s almost eased his guilt by thinking about Rose and the phone and the fact that Fawley insisted on this, he remembers what he said.

It’s the last time.

It has to be the last time. Even here, where everything feels different, Al still knows that.

And maybe Al really has grown, maybe Al really isn’t the same person anymore, that can push away everything until he can’t anymore, because this time, it doesn’t take him until the last of August to say it.

Because it’s not fair on her not to know.

“I have to tell you something.”, Al says.

They’re sitting on a bench in a park, because it’s nicer there than in their hostel. Neither of them is particularly picky as far as accommodations go, and they don’t have that much money.

“Okay”, Felina says, her voice careful and measured and unreadable like so often. It’s been so long, but she still makes it hard for him sometimes, even if not nearly as hard as in the beginning.

“I can’t come back next year”, Al says and he’s surprised at how clear it comes out—so plain and simple when it feels like anything but.

But that’s not quite true, because right that moment, maybe the second after he’s said it, he actually feels lighter. Sure, the illusion of forever, an endless summer, or at the very least the endless supply of summers yet to come, might be torn, but at least Al doesn’t have to wait with the dagger anymore.

“Oh”, Felina says, and Al keeps waiting for her to, well, to ask, but she doesn’t.

And maybe he should have just explained, anyway, but the thought comes to him that maybe she doesn’t want to know. Maybe to her, it doesn’t matter beyond the fact that he won’t be there anymore.

The thought hurts, but it shouldn’t. It’s not like she owes him any of her feelings.

So no, she doesn’t ask for an explanation. That doesn’t mean, however, that she doesn’t ask.

“Tell me about home”, she asks, or maybe commands, perhaps the next day, or the day after. It’s hard to remember the exact the timeline after, everything kind of starts bleeding together in hindsight.

Al remembers exactly, however, how strange the word sounded on her tongue.

“What, you mean England?”

She shrugs. “I mean where you go back to for the winter. So, England, I guess. What is it like there?”

So Al tells her. At first, he tells her about the weather and the food she would probably hate and how the people are different. He tells her about wizards and witches and Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and Platform 9¾. It’s not one conversation, really, because when she first asks him, he honestly doesn’t even know what to say. But the words come to him, slowly and over the days, the little thoughts and differences, tiny details of his life he usually doesn’t think about because he’s so used to them.

Felina soaks it all up, asking questions about everything. She’s especially taken with the idea of Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, places where wizards don’t bother to hide their magic at all.

It makes sense, Al supposes, that she would like a place like that, since she doesn’t really hide hers as much as she just lets people assume that it’s fake.

What she really wants to know, though, is rarely so much about the place and world he lives in, but about himself.

“What’s your favourite? Where do you always go? What do you think about it?”

 _How do you fit in this world?_ is the question she’s really asking, if in not so many words. And usually that kind of thing would scare Al, because at the end of the day, he really doesn’t know where he fits, often feels as if he barely does at all, but suddenly he finds that the answers come a lot easier than he expects them to.

And so he tells her about Fawley, and Rose and Scorpius and the _Nightowl_ , even though that’s technically not a magical place at all.

Maybe, he thinks, it’s because Felina already knows that he’s a loser without any direction that likes to paint. Kind of. The hard part is already there, mostly, so it’s easier not to worry about the rest. Everything else, in the grand scheme of things, is just decoration. Or maybe background noise.

Still, it’s strange to talk about his life like that—he rarely meets people who don’t already kind of know about him and have their own expectations. Of course, in a way, Felina does, too, but she’s made it clear a long time ago that she doesn’t care about his family name and they haven’t talked about it since. Al can’t say he minds that.

Maybe it’s force of habit, or conditioning or whatever else, but despite all that, when he’s finished, he can’t help but try and soften the blow that is the reality of his less than impressive life, told like that in words.

“I know it’s not very interesting or ambitious or anything, but I get by. It’s alright.”

He feels the words heavy on his tongue, almost regrets saying them as he looks back at Felina. The sun is quietly going down behind them, the lights fading.

He doesn’t like making excuses for himself, it makes him feel stupid and small, especially when he’s not really feeling sorry for himself. It’s just that everyone else always seems to be, and that’s somehow worse, and so the words slip out almost automatically.

Felina just smiles, in that way of hers that never quite looks happy. It’s another feature of her face that Al could just look at forever. Everything about it is just so interesting, and—more, for lack of a better word.

“I think it sounds lovely”, she says, and Al’s heard those words—and variations of them maybe a hundred times, perhaps even more often that. But it’s different, because she doesn’t mean it that way, not like he’s describing the modest background for what ought to be the much greater things he’ll be up to eventually, a stage, a phase, something that he’s bound to abandon for when destiny’s call finally does reach him, a quarter life crisis, maybe, if he’s even old enough for that, or, in particularly harsh cases, like it’s just a mild bout of insanity, a regrettable case, but there’s no good in telling him that, lest it might upset him. As if Al doesn’t notice anyway.

But Felina doesn’t mean it like that. Of course, Al reminds himself, he doesn’t really know that, can’t really know that, because there is no way to ever tell for sure what a person is thinking, but still. He feels like he knows.

He feels like maybe she gets it, in a way that none of them do, not his parents, not Rose and Scorpius, certainly not the strangers that write stupid articles about him that he hasn’t actually read in years, and, apparently, not even Fawley.

He wants this small life. He doesn’t mind the tiny bed and the mediocre pay, he barely even minds that no one ever looks at the things he makes. He doesn’t want anything else.

Well, maybe that’s not quite true. But he doesn’t want any of the things he’s supposed to want.

“Yeah?”, he asks, because for once he’s not all that scared he won’t get the confirmation.

Felina just nods. “You have your art, and a home, and enough people to not be too lonely. That sounds perfect to me.”

Al hums. He’s not sure if that’s quite right, but the way she says it makes it hard to really disagree. But he doesn’t linger on that train of thought. The novelty of the statement itself doesn’t leave any room for that kind of pondering.

For now, Al can believe that out of all the people in the world, she’s the one who might actually get it.

* * *

That day, Al thinks later, is perhaps the height of that summer. It certainly is the best moment of it, at least as far as he can remember. Memory is a little tricky sometimes, deceitful, but the moment still stands out.

After that, Al thinks, everything gets a little faster. Their movements start becoming more hasty, the looks Felina throws over her shoulder more frequent. Al feels the guilt on himself pile up again—for the same old reasons, but at the same time, for no reason specifically. There is just this feeling of wrongness, the elephant in the room—the several elephants, at this point might be more accurate to say. Al doesn’t know how to approach them. Maybe Felina doesn’t either. Maybe she just doesn’t want to.

In the end, really, it’s the elephants who catch up to them.

They’re in Croatia when it happens.

The town is small and a little touristy, reminiscent of the one they first met in. It’s in the tiny touches of the buildings. There is a surprising amount of Italian and German around, on signs and even in the names of places, a lot more than English. Felina tells him it has something to do with changing borders and a whole lot of history.

Al thinks that it’s sad that they don’t learn that kind of history in Hogwarts. It’s almost like whoever creates their lesson plans thinks that the muggle world and the wizarding one don’t affect each other at all.

But that’s not the point of the whole trip, and as the summer progresses it’s getting harder and harder to pretend it is.

It proves impossible when Felina looks across a square, sees something—or someone—that Al can’t quite catch in the crowd and whispers in his ear: “We have to leave, Al. Now.”

Al doesn’t even think about not complying, the panic in her voice is too real.

Fortunately, or perhaps just predictably, considering they haven’t even been here for a full day yet, they have all of their luggage on them, conveniently minimised in their back pockets. But then again, they haven’t really left it anywhere else in at least a week.

Al hurries the concealment charms around them, before they get back on his broom and it isn’t until they’re back in the air that he realises he doesn’t have a clue where they’re off to next.

He looks to Felina for guidance, but the look of pure fear still in her face wipes the question away.

“Go, fast”, she says, so Al picks a direction and goes.

They touch back to the ground several hours later. Night is breaking, and Al’s arms are aching. Felina’s must, too, but she doesn’t complain about it. She also doesn’t make him go further, which Al is grateful for.

They’re in Italy again, he realises as they check into a cheap hostel for the night. It’s shittier than most of them, with smelly sheets and old furniture, but he doesn’t much mind. He’s just glad that they can get some rest, really that they’ve found some place to stay.

He feels the tension fall off him in what feels like waves almost. They’ve gotten away, for now. For today.

And just as he thinks that, he realises that he still hasn’t got a clue what it is that they’re running away from. And with that day, with that incident, it suddenly isn’t okay not to know anymore. It’s time to have this conversation, even if they are in a dorm room where other people could barge in at any time. It doesn’t matter. It can’t be delayed anymore.

Al tosses his water bottle to Felina and she takes a sip without even looking at it, glancing around the room frantically instead.

Al looks at her. He’s trying to find the right words in his head, say it in a way that won’t scare her any more, in a way that’ll make her tell him, but he doesn’t really know, so it ends up being embarrassingly simple.

“Felina, I—I need—I need an explanation.”

She looks back at him now.

“We should go to a library.”, she says, and her words throw Al off for a split second, before she adds: “You can always go to them without too many questions asked, and it’s a bit more private.”

“Alright”, Al says, feeling more uncomfortable by the second. He didn’t think it would be possible, but apparently, it is.

They find a library. It’s not even that small, they are in a bit bigger town, hence the hostel, but that probably works to their advantage. They don’t stand out that much in the very back of the library, don’t look quite as strange as they maybe would. It’s not enough to make Felina relax, her eyes still throwing around tiny glances, fingers shaking slightly on the desk that they’ve occupied.

It suddenly occurs to Al that she’s always been like this, a little. He’s never ever seen her as something that would resemble relaxed in any way. Maybe that time in the garden. But that seems far away now.

He sighs, trying to put all the confusion and stress and worry and guilt in that breath. It doesn’t bring him that much relief.

“Please”, he says, “just tell me.”

Felina bites her lip, quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry”, she says eventually, “It’s hard to talk about, I’m not used to that—”

There’s a tiny pause and for a moment Al has that instinct to tell her that it’s fine, she doesn’t need to tell him, he doesn’t really need to know, but that’s not true. He really does need to know. In a way, he’s kind of in it now, and even if he hasn’t got the chance to freak out about whatever this was quite yet, he knows that he’ll potentially drive himself crazy over it if he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t think he can bear to do crazy anymore.

“I—“, Felina struggles again, and Al can hear her accent seeping into her voice stronger than it usually does. “You have to promise to never tell this to anyone, alright? Never, not even—just never, okay?”

Al’s quick to nod. “Of course not.”

She takes a deep breath. “My name—my real name is Amarilli Neri.”

Al stares for a moment. He didn’t expect that. For her to tell him her name of all things. At the same time, he doesn’t really know what to do with it. But it certainly does something with him. It’s strange but it’s probably the most tangible thing she’s ever said to him. It’s a big deal. He can tell, in the tiniest shiver of her voice. That, and the tiny fact that in the three years he’s known her he’s never witnessed her telling anyone that.

She’s looking at him, clearly waiting for some kind of reaction.

“Uh”, Al says, cursing his own lack of eloquence, “thank you for telling me that. For, uh, trusting me with that.”

Felina smiles her unhappy smile that Al knows so well by now. “You don’t know what that means, do you?”

Al shakes his head.

“That’s what I thought”, Felina says, but she doesn’t sound like she’s mad about it, more relieved if anything, “My family, the Neris—we are kind of well-known in magical Italy. Or we used to be, anyway.”

She frowns.

“I don’t know if it’s the same in England, but here, it’s very important what family you belong to. There are the—how do you call them in English—with the parents who can’t do any magic?”

“Muggleborns”, Al injects and she nods.

“There are schools for the muggleborns, and some of the other wizards and witches go there, too, but here, knowledge about magic is secret, sometimes. You learn from your family, and your friends, sometimes, if they are willing to share.”

“So you learned your magic from your parents?”, Al asks, wondering where in the world she’s going with all of this.

Felina nods, then shakes her head. “No, actually, it was my grandmother. What I mean is that the old families here—they are very powerful.”

Al smiles, trying to be encouraging. He’s familiar with that concept at least, even if it isn’t quite as severe as it used to be anymore.

“We have Hogwarts”, he explains, “so we all learn similar things, but families are still important.”

Felina nods. “The Neris”, she says, then hesitates a little before she corrects herself, “ _We_ used to be quite an important family. We were well known for our gift to tell the future.” She swallows. “It’s family magic.”

Al doesn’t dare to say a word, even though his thoughts are running a million kilometres an hour.

“It’s rare, and it can be very powerful.” Her voice becomes strained. “When I was little—well, I’m not quite sure what happened exactly, but there are some people—they are very powerful, not with magic, with money and there are so many who are loyal to them, in both worlds—they got wind of our gift—it wasn’t exactly hard at the time, we were not quiet about it, there was no reason to.”

She’s getting faster and faster, her sentences a bit frantic, but the words don’t stop coming. Al doesn’t want to interrupt, doesn’t want to stop her.

“So these people—my parents started working for them, and I think it was not a big deal at first, just tiny glimpses in the future, probabilities, stuff like that, and I think it was fine at first, but it is a little hard to remember. But they wanted to know too much—the stock market and elections and the luck and everything. But it doesn’t work like that, you know that, it is not quite precise, so everything started going wrong. They weren’t satisfied and they started to threaten my parents—I don’t actually remember that part that well, but I guessed some of it over the years—eventually it got so bad that—well, my parents told my grandmother to go away with me and—well, she did. I never saw them again after that. My parents, I mean.”

The stream of words stop there.

Al blinks, very slowly. He reaches his hand over to touch hers and when she lets him, he takes it.

“I’m sorry”, he says. He doesn’t know what else to say. There isn’t anything really.

“My grandmother raised me and taught me everything, all the magic I know—but then they came for us, too. I don’t know what they want. More prophecies, I think. I got away—but—it was very close. Ever since then—I move around a lot. I don’t tell my name to anybody. I don’t go in wizard society at all. I do readings for tourists and when people start noticing I go somewhere else.”

She pauses again, takes a few shuttering breathes.

Al’s brain is still milling around his head.

“That’s terrible”, is the first thing he thinks to say.

She shrugs, but he can see that she doesn’t mean it.

“No, it really is—it’s—how long—?”

He doesn’t finish the question, but she seems to get it anyway.

“I was sixteen. When they found—that’s when I started being alone.”

Al can only stare.

“They are still looking for me now”, Felina says, “They don’t give up. No matter what I do, I can’t get away. They are too powerful and they are everywhere.”

“Felina”, Al says, like the name is an edge he’s holding onto, “who are _they_?”

“Criminals.” Her voice shakes. “I don’t actually—they do many different things. Drugs, and betting, and what is it called?”

She doesn’t elaborate.

“It does not matter. When someone is standing in their way, they will do anything…” She trails of.

Al stares at her. “Felina”, he whispers, “Are you talking about the _mafia?_ ”

Felina shushes him instantly, but the way her eyes widen tell him more than words ever could. “Are you crazy? Don’t say that out loud.”

She looks around again, but their surroundings haven’t really changed. There’s a bored teenager a few aisles away, and the librarian at the front. Neither of them is paying any attention to Al and Felina.

“Sorry, sorry”, Al says.

There’s a moment of silence.

Al’s mind is reeling with everything he’s just heard. He’s not quite sure what he thought was up with Felina, why she’s always hiding, never telling anyone her name, but he certainly didn’t think _that_.

Suddenly it hits him how much she’s trusting him right now, telling him all of this. And it’s even more than that—she’s risked so much, staying at the same place for the whole summer, multiple times, just to see him. He never even knew—and now he knows her name, too.

Amarilli. It sounds foreign in his mouth. Probably because it is. Foreign. He wonders if it’s a common name in Italy. Should he call her that now?

He pushes the thought away. Not relevant.

“There must be something you can do—can’t you just go away somewhere they won’t find you?”

Felina blinks back at him, with the face of a person that has already considered everything, thought out every argument. She looks tired. It reminds Al of something, but he can’t quite figure out what.

“Where, Al? Anywhere in Italy, they will always find me. If I leave the country, they will find out, too—too many official documents, and they know my name. If I cross a border they will know. Besides, how in the world would I get a visa? They are looking for me, Al—you saw that.”

Al nods. “And if you change your name?”

“I have thought about it before. They would find out about that, too. They’re everywhere in the government. Besides, that’s a really obvious move. What kind of person randomly changes their name?”

Al considers it for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe people who get married.”

Felina stares.

Al stares back. Then he realises what he just said. Heat spreads all over his face.

“Oh—I—I didn’t mean—”

But as he says it, the cogs in his brain start turning.

“I mean”, he says, and his face grows even hotter, “If we—you could go to England with me, if we did that. You could have a different name and—maybe that would be far enough and you wouldn’t—you wouldn’t have to spend all your time hiding anymore.”

At this point, he’s more talking to the desk than to her. It feels presumptuous, even considering something like that, like there’s no way she could ever agree to something so ridiculous. But on the other hand—he wants to help her and if that is the way—he doesn’t mind her being the ticket for her escape. No one deserves to live like this, always on the run—it’s a nightmare. Al doesn’t want her life to be a nightmare anymore. That’s worth getting over a little embarrassment.

Felina doesn’t say anything and after a few seconds Al raises his head after all, to tentatively look at her face.

She’s crying.

Not in the loud, messy way, but completely silently, just tears rolling down her face, without any sound to be heard.

Al scrambles for some tissues and finds a half-full package somewhere on the bottom of his bag. They’re crumbled, but he still hands her one.

She takes it.

“I—“, she says, after a few seconds, her voice sounding choked. “You are—you are such a good person, Al—I can never—you are too nice to me.”

Al snorts at that. “I’m not that nice—I just—you deserve a better life.”

He’s not that good. There are miles of proof of that—starting with the fact that he’s here at all. Or maybe it’s that he ever considered not being here? Everything is starting to blur in his head at this point, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever is right, he’s still at fault. And then there are all the other times he’s let his friends and his family down… He doesn’t deserve her thinking of him in that kind of way. At the same time, he’s kind of glad that she does. Which, if he thinks about it really, is only further proof of his theory.

Felina shrugs at that. “Life doesn’t care about what you deserve.”

She might be right, but still—Al can’t just accept that. And she can’t, either. He knows it.

“Well”, he says, the conviction in his voice returning, “I care.”

“Yeah”, she says, and her hand finds his under the table, “You do.”

“Let’s do it, then”, he says, and squeezes her hand in his.

She doesn’t squeeze back.

“Unless you—unless you don’t want to”, Al says quietly, his heart sinking in his chest again. He’s being creepy and presumptive, isn’t he? She thinks he’s crazy and she doesn’t know how to tell him so. That’s what’s happening here. She thinks he’s a massive creep with a sky-high ego that assumes anyone will marry him just like that. But that’s not what he’s trying to do. “I’m sorry, I just want to help—“, he starts, but she just cuts him off.

“Of course I want to. Of course I want to get away.” Now she’s blushing as well, red patches just there on her cheeks. Al hasn’t seen that on her a lot. “Of course I want to go to England with you.”

Al can’t pretend the words don’t affect him. “Then we should do it.”

She smiles at him again. Al thinks that maybe he’s starting to hate that smile. It never means good things. It never means happiness.

“Al, do you really think they wouldn’t know if I got married? That would just make you a target, too.” She squints. “Even more than you already are. They must have seen us together.”

Al wants to scream. This is beyond frustrating.

“Then we’ll just do it in some really tiny place, where nobody knows you. Or me. Or anything. Merlin, we could change our appearances and confound the person who’s done it.”

Felina’s not crying anymore. “Do you really think that could work?”, she asks and the relief Al feels is so palpable, he’s surprised his heart is still beating.

“I think”, he says, “I think it’s a better shot than what you’re doing right now.”

* * *

They do it the next day. There’s no point in waiting. It’s almost the end of the summer, anyway, and there are people on the look for them. There’s really no time to waste.

They’re doing it in the tiny town hall of a tiny mountain village in the north of Italy. In the north because the mafia, as Felina explains in not so many words, has less of a hold there. In a tiny village because there’s less people to see them there. The town hall is tiny because it’s the only town hall in the tiny town. That part only makes sense, really.

“Do you remember the plan?”, Felina whispers to Al as they enter said tiny town hall.

“I remember the plan”, says Al, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. It’s really not all that elaborate, when you think about it, even though they’ve spent basically all of last night coming up with it. Really, it just involves a lot of well-timed confundus-charms. And even so—as if Al would have forgotten. But he knows she’s not trying to be mean, just anxious.

They don’t have an appointment, as you would usually need, but that’s fine. Al feels slightly bad, bewitching the poor clerk like that, but it’s not like he has any better ideas. At least he has the reassurance that it won’t hurt the guy in the least. Sure, he’ll probably confused for the rest of the day, but with a good night’s sleep, that’ll pass as well. Unlike Felina’s problems, if they don’t do anything about it.

The whole affair is more than awkward. The clerk keeps mixing up the words and holds them a jumbled speech about the importance of enjoying the same kind of pasta in a relationship. Al is flustered, not only because he neither knows what kind of pasta Felina prefers nor what the difference between any of them is, really, but also because, well, he’s getting married.

That’s the kind of thing it’s normal to get nervous about, isn’t it?

Not that this is a very normal wedding. Al’s been to those before, he knows. But that doesn’t really change the fact that he’s _getting married._ Al hasn’t really thought about the concept of marriage in great detail before, mostly because it never seemed like something that would be relevant to him in the immediate future. He was wrong about that, obviously, but even if he did think about it, Al doubts he could have predicted this kind of situation.

Not that it matters much, if he’s pondered the concept before or not, because now they are doing it. And Al doesn’t need to think all that much to know that—well, it’s kind of important. So he can be a little nervous.

Felina doesn’t seem to be haunted by thoughts of that kind, if only because she’s too busy being tense and worried. Even inside the positively abandoned town hall, empty safe for the two of them and the clerk, she doesn’t stop throwing little glances around, always on the look-out for—well.

Suddenly, Al doesn’t want anything more than just for all of this to be _over._

He wants her to be fine, to be happy, to be safe, more than anything. He wants her somewhere she doesn’t have to be scared. He wants some peace for her. And he wants to do the right thing. This is the first step to do that. He just wishes it would go a little faster.

…honestly, how many different kinds of pasta can there be? He kind of assumes that’s what the clerk’s still talking about. His Italian really isn’t advanced enough for this.

Finally, they’re at the part of the vows.

Al stumbles through his. He’s pretty sure he messes up the pronunciation, but Felina doesn’t seem too bothered by it. The clerk is probably to out of it to notice.

She repeats his words hastily, then the clerk tells them to kiss.

Al feels even more awkward. They’ve kissed with other people present before, obviously, but Al’s never felt so… …watched. Suddenly he’s scared he’ll mess it up. Before he can think about it any more, Felina’s lips are touching his. She stays there for a moment, not much more than a few seconds, then she’s gone again.

After this, they can move on to the paperwork. Al is almost relieved, even though this is the actual hard part.

His wand hidden beneath his light summer jacket, he casts another confundus.

It might have been a little too much, because it takes the guy a minute to hand them the right documents, but he makes it at last.

Al takes it first, grabbing a pen with almost too much vigour, but he just wants this to get over with.

But before he can put the pen to paper, Felina grabs his arm.

“Don’t sign it!”, she hisses.

Al slowly relaxes his hand, looking back at her. “But—I have to—that’s, well, that’s kind of the thing you do!”

They can’t stop now!

Her eyes swirl around the room again. “Yes, I know”, she whispers, “But I don’t want your name on that. They could find it, and I don’t want them to know your name!”

“Well—“, Al says, not sure how to end the sentence. He gets her point, really, even though he doesn’t really think they could get to him—get to them—all the way in England, at least he hopes so—but on the other hand, if he doesn’t sign, all of this is futile.

“Just”, Felina says, glancing at the clerk and back, “Can you just pretend you signed it? And maybe cross out your name instead?”

“I—“, Al says, again not sure what to say.

“Do the thing?”, she asks, making a motion with her hand that’s not unlike the motion used for the confundus charm.

“Alright”, Al whispers back and reaches for his wand again. He really does feel bad, but at the same time he doesn’t really see another name.

Felina makes a straight line where her signature is supposed to go. Al’s almost positive that’s not her actual signature.

“About my name, then—“, she starts in Italian, but this time the clerk miraculously has the form ready.

Felina actually signs this one, again with the straight line, but before that, she fills it in.

 _Amy Potter_.

Her handwriting is even and neat and there is not a shred of hesitation in the movement of her hand.

“Amy?”, Al whispers behind her.

He feels her shrug against his shoulder. “It’s a new life”, she says and he’s not quite sure if her words sound relieved or scared. Maybe both at once. “I don’t want my old name anymore. It’s only brought me trouble anyway. It can stay here forever.”

Al doesn’t know what to say to that so he just says nothing. He doesn’t think he could ever give his name up like that, change it into a barely recognisable form. Then, on the other hand, he hasn’t been running from his name for years, has he? There’s a metaphor there, somewhere, but he can’t find it.

They stay in the tiny town for exactly a week. That makes Felina very nervous. For one because it’s an entire week, and also because it’s such a tiny town. People here are much more likely to remember specific tourists. But that’s how long it will take until Amy Potter’s papers are ready. They have to wait for that.

It’s getting near the end of August now. _I would have had to go home soon now, anyway_ , Al thinks four days into their wait. It’s strange to think about it now. This summer has been so different from what he had thought, so other from the ones he’s had before. He almost didn’t come back here—and even now that he has, everything is different still.

With a start he realises that he’s finally done what he was supposed to do this entire time. Travel, see new things, make experiences—he’s pretty sure that Fawley didn’t mean for him to commit—what crime is it that he and Felina are committing right now? Document forgery? Not really, since the documents are completely legit. They are just for a person that doesn’t technically exist. Or a name that doesn’t exist, he supposes. Felina is very much a real person, after all. Anyway, he’s pretty sure it’s not quite legal either way. But that’s beside the point. Al just kind of hopes nobody ever finds out.

Still, he’s done the thing. He’s actually done the thing.

He has finally done what he was supposed to do. Felina will come home with him. Fawley is okay, as per the last owl Rose sent him. (The owls make Felina nervous, too, but there’s nothing to be done about that. They’re finding Al, not her and Al can’t go without knowing that Fawley hasn’t decided to drop dead on him.) Felina is coming home with him.

In a way, it’s all coming together. All the loose threads of his life, all his maybes and regrets and mistakes—they seem to have transformed, suddenly, in something hopeful.

And as they get on Al’s broom for the last time this summer, new names and new starts in their bags, Al can’t help but feel like it’s something of the end of a novel—a happily ever after for him, at last.

Or, at the very least, the start of one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a little late, for the simple reason that I kind of forgot it was Tuesday yesterday? I can be a bit stupid like that. I hope you enjoyed this chapter regardless, and I can't wait to hear what you think of it! (But seriously, don't think too hard about how the legal stuff is supposed to work, let's just pretend Al and Felina's methods of evading public records are... ...you know, totally legit and would absolutely work.)


	16. a place (where no one knows you)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which two parts of Al's reality crash together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. So, this took forever. Sorry about that. In my defense, it's really long and it caused me immense emotional pain to write? Thanks for sticking with me!

Flying over London fills Al with all kinds of feelings. I always does, but even so, the fact also always surprises him. The air of the late summer feels different than the early one he’s left in, like the streets already yearn for the cool of autumn.

As the tiny buildings beneath them become bigger and bigger, Al is hit with the overwhelming feeling of coming home. Maybe in more ways than one. Sure, he’s grown up in this city and lived there his entire adult life, but it’s really only just now that things are coming together. This is the start of how things are supposed to be. For the first time, things are turning out right, like Al’s finally starting to mold his life in its proper form. The happy, successful one. Well, sort of. He’s still a penniless artist with mediocre adulting skills, but whatever. Everything will be fine. More than fine. Great.

It will be great, and now they are home.

“We’re home!”

He’s yelling a little to make himself heard against the wind, and even like that, he’s not quite sure Felina can make out the words. He feels her shift against his back.

It’s crazy that she’s here. He never would have dared to think, he’d never even imagined—but now, well. Felina probably knows more about signs than he does, but Al’s calling this one. If they even are a thing. Al doesn’t really pretend to know enough about the world to have strong convictions about that kind of stuff.

Only as they’re touching ground does it occurs to Al that he hasn’t really thought this through. At all.

Nobody knows that they’re coming. Al’s only expected in the next couple of days, and Felina not at all, obviously. Fawley doesn’t even know she exists, to Al’s knowledge.

Fawley doesn’t know she exists. Al _lives_ with Fawley. He can’t just let her stay there without him knowing.

And even beyond that, can you even just move to another country? Don’t you have to—well, fill out some paperwork at the border or something? At the very least? Broomsticks aren’t really restricted to normal border checkpoints, obviously, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any rules. Al tries to remember what Scorpius used to tell him about international travel, but it’s all a little blurry. Even Scorpius wasn’t very focused on that part of transportation. Holy magic, is what they just did illegal? Are they going to be sent to Azkaban?

“Felina”, he says, trying not to sound stressed, “Do you think it’s allowed to just move to another country?”

“Um”, Felina says, “I think it’s allowed within the EU?”

Al doesn’t know what the EU is. “Are we in the EU?”

“No”, Felina says, “Italy is, but no.”

There’s a slight pause.

 _Nothing in my life,_ Al thinks, _has prepared me for this._

“They will have to let you stay, though, won’t they?”, Al asks, “Because we’re married?”

He’s pretty sure that’s a thing. After all, people get married to move to other countries, right?

“We don’t have a marriage certificate”, Felina says.

Oh. Right. That is also a thing.

“But I think they have to let me stay regardless, if I’m in danger back home—it’s” She struggles with the word. “—asylum.”

“Right”, Al says, glad that they have something. “So we tell—the ministry?”

“The ministry?”, Felina asks.

“The ministry of magic”, Al clarifies. “I don’t want to be in trouble”, he adds in the enduring silence. “I want to do this right.”

Or it would just be more running. There’s been so much running. Enough to last a lifetime, really.

“Yeah”, Felina says, her voice clearer. “Yeah, you are right.” She takes a deep breath and looks around the dark houses. It’s just late enough to be dark outside. “Tomorrow?”, she asks.

Al nods. Tomorrow will have to be enough. He hopes. For now, they need to rest. They need to go home.

Al takes a deep breath and tries to channel the way he was feeling only a few minutes ago. Things are coming together. That doesn’t mean it’s easier, but they still are. There’s light at the end of the tunnel. For once, Felina’s looking around with more curiosity than fear of shady mafia guys. He can figure this out.

His mind flashes back to the hopeless way Felina looked at him right before they came up with this whole crazy plan and then to his own lack of faith sitting in Rose’ and Scorpius flat thinking there was no good way to solve the situation. The hardest part is over. Now, Al will see it through to the end.

He’s determined. It _is_ a sign, Al decides, his usual half-assed convictions be damned. So what if he isn’t the type to ponder whether the universe talks to him on a daily basis or not? If it does, it’s a miracle it hasn’t gotten tired of him yet. Al certainly isn’t a very attentive listener. Except this time.

“I haven’t really thought through our housing situation.”, he admits, because all determination aside, that is still true.

“You know I don’t mind”, Felina says, in a very general way, but Al can pick up on her meaning from the way her hands move around in the dark space of the evening air.

“I know”, Al says, because of course she won’t be fussed by his small bedroom and narrow bed and mediocre mattress, they’ve both slept on worse. The reminder still makes his chest a little lighter.

“It’s just—Fawley doesn’t know about you.”

“You never told him about me?” Al can’t tell from her voice if she’s offended.

“You didn’t seem like you wanted people to know about you.”, Al says. It’s not wrong, but it also isn’t quite the truth. He doesn’t know how to tell her that whenever he was back home, Felina just felt kind of imaginary. A dream. Not really someone you could just talk about. And Al is secretive at the best of times.

“I don’t.”, Felina says.

 _Yeah,_ Al thinks, _she didn’t._ That’s one thing he got right. One thing he doesn’t have to regret.

“Anyway”, Al says, “it’ll be fine. Fawley likes meeting new people. We’ll work something out.”

He doesn’t really have a way of knowing that, but if he doesn’t say that, he maybe doesn’t have to think it either. It doesn’t matter, anyway, because he can’t really change it now, anyway.

He fishes his keys out of the pocket of his jeans and opens the front door of the building, but as they come up to the door of the flat, he hesitates. He’d just walk in, usually, but it feels wrong to not give Fawley a heads-up that a stranger is coming in his flat. He lives there, too, after all.

His eyes glide up to the old post-it note that is still up there. _Knock thrice, then whistle._ He hasn’t really seen it in years, the way you don’t really see things anymore when you walk by them everyday; they are so present in the background of your life that you stop paying attention their existence.

Sure, Al is familiar enough with the signal—it means they have a customer, usually, but the actual piece of paper itself—there it is, looking exactly the same. Fawley must have enchanted it somehow, for it to still stick to the door after all this time.

Well, Al might as well alert Fawley to their presence this way.

“Do you know how to whistle?”, he asks Felina on a whim.

She gives him a weird look. “Yes?”

“Good.”

He doesn’t know what else to say. He isn’t even entirely sure why he asked.

Al knocks, three times, then whistles.

Fawley is remarkably fast in opening the door. Also remarkably, well, stormy, might be the right word to use.

Al is almost surprised the door hasn’t hit any noses.

“Merlin!”, he shouts at the same time that Fawley exclaims: “Albus!”

There’s a small pause.

“Yeah”, Al says, “That’s my name, regrettably.”

“I knew I recognised that whistle”, Fawley says, which seems pretty bizarre considering Al hasn’t whistled at the door since Fawley gave him a key more than three years ago. Besides, don’t all people sound the same whistling? But honestly, Al has heard Fawley say much stranger things, so he isn’t too bothered. He has other things to focus on.

Fawley opens his arms and Al leans down to give him a hug. Again strikes the strange disconnect he always feels when he’s away—it’s only now that he’s back here that he realises just how much he’s missed the old man.

“I’m home.”, he says, almost unconsciously, and even though there is absolutely no need to say it.

He pulls away and remembers the situation.

Felina’s been quietly standing behind him the entire time and either Fawley hasn’t seen her or he just hasn’t felt the need to address her.

“Um”, Al says, somewhat awkwardly, “This is—”

He trails off, realising he doesn’t quite know what to call her. What he’s allowed to call her. Felina? His girlfriend? His wife? It doesn’t really seem like something that’s just okay to say without having her explicit opinion on it.

“I’m Amy”, Felina says and spares him the need to make an awkward decision. Her Italian accent somehow sounds a lot thicker surrounded by the London gravel stone and on the carpet floor of Al’s building.

“I’m Al Fawley.”, Fawley replies, “Alistair Fawley.” He’s perhaps just starting to accept the futility of trying to call himself Al to people who already know Al, Albus, like that.

He stretches his hand out for her to shake and she takes it. She’s smiling, but Al can see through the tension behind it. Fawley must, too, he’s always been a lot better at this part than Al.

“Nice to meet you”, she says, “Al’s told me many things about you.”

The statement catches Al off-guard for a second until he realises that it’s true. Indeed, he has told her a lot about Fawley. Maybe everything. Only now in the past few months, when she’d started to ask him about his life here. About home. He’s told her things he’s never said out loud before, just how scared he is for Fawley to get worse and how he considers him family even though they aren’t really related.

But Fawley doesn’t know anything about Felina at all. And Al doesn’t have the words to explain.

“Can’t say the same”, Fawley replies and he has that inscrutable look in his eyes. Al hates that. He really wants to know how this is going.

Felina smiles a small smile. “I’m not all that interesting.”, she says, which isn’t remotely true, and Al is fairly sure that Fawley can tell that as well. He’s an artist after all, and Felina—well, Al might be biased, but still—she’s just the kind of person that inspires art.

Fawley’s blue eyes find Al’s again.

“So”, Al says, wishing he had thought this through at least a tiny little bit, just enough that he’d know what to say right now. He didn’t though, and he doesn’t. “I—we need to work something out, I know, but—can we—is it alright for now?”

Fawley looks at him for a moment and a second Al thinks he’s going to make him elaborate, but in the end, he doesn’t.

“Of course”, he says, and there is something in his voice and his eyes that strikes Al as unusual, as different, but he can’t parse it. “Of course”, he repeats, kindly, softly, “Come on in.”

The flat hasn’t changed since Al left, and the passage of time is really only visible in the different projects and art supplies scattered across the art room.

Al gets the tea mugs out without thinking about it, even before he drops their luggage in his room and turns it back to its original size.

Felina is standing in the art room, staring at the walls in wonder.

“This is so cool!”, she says, caution and suspicion suddenly completely gone from her voice again. It’s a while since Al has heard her like that, but he isn’t really surprised she likes it. Felina’s always liked magic, and seeing it, too.

“I can’t wait to see what you think of Diagon Alley”, Al says, because honestly, he can’t.

“Do we have any cucumber?”, he asks, turning to Fawley, already thinking about what they could have for a late dinner. He lets his gaze linger on the old man, still checking all the signs on if he’s alright. It’s not that Al forgot about that worry while he was away, it’s just, well, being just back he really, really remembers.

“Yes”, Fawley answers instantly. Knowing that so certainly is a surprising amount of organisation from him, so Al raises his eyebrows.

Fawley shrugs dramatically. “Your friend Rose is radical. Really adamant about groceries.”

Al grins at the jab. It’s really directed at him, not at Rose, because not only has he asked her to be like that, he is _like that_ a lot more than she is, probably even if she tries. And Fawley knows that, too.

But even beyond that, it’s just a very Fawley thing to say, and that, alone, makes Al feel like he really is back home, a lot more than London streets or even a hug can.

* * *

Felina soon goes to sleep after that, and it isn’t long until Fawley also retreats back to his bedroom.

Al, in his usual nocturnal manner, stays up. There is just something about the familiar darkness of the flat that keeps him from wanting to go to sleep. That and his thoughts.

They have so much to work out.

There’s immigration, of course. They’ll have to register Felina with the ministry. Al doesn’t really know a whole lot about it, but his conversation with Felina earlier has jogged a vague memory of a half-overheard conversation within the French part of his family, Aunt Fleur and her folks. Al vaguely remembers them saying that within Wizarding Europe it’s not supposed to be all that hard. He really hopes that true. He really hopes they haven’t broken the law. At least not very badly. Then, on the other hand, the ministry would understand that Felina was in a desperate situation, right?

They must.

And then?

Al wonders if tourists in London would want someone to tell their fortune, too. Probably, right? As far as he could tell, that was a hit pretty much everywhere they went, so why wouldn’t it here? Wait, is doing that actually legal? Al’s more or less sure it must be in Italy, but the UK could be much stricter with their secrecy laws, and Al’s never heard of any witch or wizard who made their money off muggles in a similar way Felina does.

Then again, he doesn’t even know if Felina even wants to continue doing that. She’s never really had the chance of a real job in the wizarding world, and now that she does, why wouldn’t she want that instead? She could become a, well, a master of divination in Wizarding London. If that’s what it’s called. Whatever it’s called, anyway. There must be people like that, right? Al doesn’t really know any, but still—it’s not like he’s the most informed person. Besides, seers are rare.

And even if she doesn’t want anything like that, there are probably tons of other things she could do anyway, even in the muggle world. If Al, who really isn’t all that competent at literally anything, can do that, she should be able to do it easily. Maybe, Al thinks, if he asked Monica, she would even find some kind of position for Felina to take on at the _Nightowl_ , too.

In any case, it’ll be fine. Whatever happens, it’ll turn out fine.

He knows that Felina will love it here. He can’t wait to show her everything—there’s Diagon Alley, of course, but even beyond that, maybe they could make a trip to platform nine three quarters, even though neither of them really has any need to go to Hogwarts anymore. He wonders if it would be dishonest to try and see Lucy off for her last year—he’s never really been compelled to do that before. She would see through it, instantly, Al’s sure.

 _Well,_ Al amends in his head, _we should definitely go to Hogsmeade._

The thought makes him almost embarrassingly excited. Magic has always been the thing they talked the most about, as silly as it sounds. But Felina is fascinated with all forms of it and there is hardly a more magical place than Hogsmeade. Except, well—it’s really a shame they don’t have a reason to visit Hogwarts.

That night, Al lets his thoughts seep away and replaces them with daydreams. _It’ll all work out fine._

* * *

When he wakes up the next noon, he needs a second to remember the situation. Felina, who doesn’t have Al’s extremely weird sleep habits has gotten up a while ago, so when he wakes up on his mediocre mattress on his small bed in the small room he loves, he’s alone and it is easy to forget for a second.

Then he gets up and hears conversation from the kitchen.

_Oh._

His brain plays a speedy catch-up until he realises what’s going on. Well, sort of.

Fawley and Felina’s conversation wanes as he comes into the kitchen, but it’s too early for him to question that. He goes to make food for all of them instead.

Opening the fridge, Al is pleasantly surprised. Rose really has made sure that Fawley has enough to eat, at all times, which has the added bonus that Al has some options to work with for breakfast/lunch or whatever this meal would be called.

Right, Rose. He’ll have to thank her for doing this for him. More than thank really. He’ll think of something. Al is historically bad at any kind of present, but he promises himself to make an effort.

He’s missed them, anyway, Rose and Scorpius. He can’t wait to see them again. And, he supposes, he’ll get to introduce Felina as well.

The thought hits him like lightening. Not in a bad way, really, it’s just—it’s not really something he’s imagined happening. He’s not quite sure why, it’s just—well, it’s so weird that she’s _actually here._ That doesn’t seem like something the universe would let happen. But it has. And he keeps thinking those things, almost as if on loop, but he can’t help himself.

It’s fine. Al just needs to adjust to that feeling.

It’ll all be fine.

He finishes making food on autopilot, gets out the plates and sets the table.

Felina and Fawley come to eat with him.

“What are you thinking about?”, Felina asks Al in English, possibly for Fawley’s benefit. They’ve been talking a lot in Italian lately, because Al wants to practice. It’s highly unlikely that the two of them will ever go back there, as things are, but still. It feels important to Al to know the language.

He startles out of his thoughts. He didn’t even realise he was lost in them. “Just about what we need to do next.” He hesitates for a moment, before he admits the truth. “I’m a little overwhelmed.”

“You should go and apply for asylum at the ministry for Amy”, Fawley says suddenly.

Al looks at him, surprised.

“It’s not illegal, right? Her coming here?” That’s another thing that’s been playing on loop in his mind almost the entire time, subconscious or not. The idea alone that Fawley might know anything concrete about it fills his chest with relief.

Fawley shakes his head. “No, Italian wizards can come to the UK just fine. But if you go do that, Amy will have more legal protection from the people that are after her.”

Al looks between them.

“We talked about it this morning.”, Felina says and Al doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be surprised or not. Felina’s secretive, more so than anyone else Al knows, including himself. But Fawley’s always been good at letting himself in on secrets. It always works on Al at least, and Al suspects that he’s not the only one. There’s just something about the old man.

He decides it’s not that important. It helps, either way. Fawley will understand everything that’s going on a lot better this way. Besides, Al doesn’t really like keeping secrets from him, whether they are his own or not, not to mention that he’s terrible at it anyway.

“To the ministry, then”, Al says.

Felina nods and a tentative smile appears on her face. It’s a new one, one that he hasn’t seen all that often yet. Al hopes he’ll get to see it a lot more.

* * *

“Are you sure this will work?”, Felina says as they crowd in the telephone booth that is the entrance to the ministry. “It does not look like it still works.”

But just in that moment, Al manages to hit the right combination of numbers and a cool voice asks them their names.

“Albus Potter and Amy Potter”, Al says, “We’re here to, uh—”

He looks at Felina, unsure how to phrase their purpose.

“I’m here to seek asylum from the British Ministry of Magic”, she states, and her voice almost doesn’t shake.

“Well, and I’m here—” He’s here to help her. “—for moral support.”, Al ends lamely.

Two badges fall out.

_Amy Potter – Asylum Request_

_Albus Potter –Moral Support_

Al almost has to laugh. What a ridiculous thing to put on a badge. He’ll have to keep that somewhere so he can have a good laugh at it a few years down the line.

Seconds later, they find themselves in the middle of the Atrium.

Al needs a moment to find back to himself. It’s been a while since he’s been here and he’s forgotten just how big it actually is, all that space, full of busy people in robes. And then there is the peace fountain, of course, giant and etched with the names of people who died in the war. Both of the wars, really. It never fails to impress Al. Even now, when his mind is entirely elsewhere, he can’t help but notice.

The rest of the Atrium—people coming and going, entering and leaving through the elevators and the floo system, aren’t really paying any attention to them, undoubtedly all very important and very busy.

That’s another thing Al’s almost forgotten over the summer. What important lives some other people lead, how serious and meaningful they are. It’s not really that he forgot that, per se, but he forgot to be aware of it—that not everyone’s just floating around like he does. Some people actually know what they’re doing. Or at least they think they do.

Al can’t even imagine what that would feel like.

“They’re all wearing—what’s the word?”, Felina says next to him.

She’s been looking around, too, which only makes sense, considering she’s the one that actually hasn’t been here before.

“Robes”, Al answers automatically, “they’re wearing robes. It’s kind of normal, you know, wizard fashion?”

“Is it a formal thing?”, Felina asks, looking up and down her own body.

“Not really”, Al replies truthfully, “I mean, it depends. There’s a degree in how fancy they are, but most adult wizards and witches wear them more or less all the time.”

“Oh”, Felina says, looking a bit worried, “We have them, too, I think in Italy, but, you know—I have not spend that much time with other witches and wizards.”

 _Yeah_ , Al thinks, and it takes him a moment to appreciate how truly bizarre this situation must be for her.

“It’s fine, though”, he says quickly, “You don’t need to be wearing them, it’s not like it’s mandatory. Look, I don’t have them either.”

He doesn’t. He’s wearing some jeans he just about checked to see if they were clean this morning and a washed-out grey T-shirt that has some barely decipherable font on it. Even though he’s just told Felina that it’s fine, he winces a little. He wasn’t lying, there’s nothing wrong with wearing muggle clothes in and of itself and he indeed wears this kind of stuff all the time—out around London, on the way to work, when he’s going to get groceries, that kind of thing. Just not usually when he goes to Diagon Alley or other wizard spaces. He tries more to look a little like one then. Not that it really matters, of course, it’s just—well, there is something about it.

Another thing that Al seems to forget when he goes away. Well, he’ll have to deal with it now. It’s not a big deal.

It’ll all be fine. That’s his mantra now, or something.

“So…”, he changes the subject, eyes gliding over the board listing the departments with their respective floors, “We’ll need to be going to—the Department of International Magical Cooperation. That’s level five.”

“Alright”, Felina says, determination creeping back in her voice.

“Alright”, Al repeats, “So the lifts are over there…”

He’s already walking towards them when Felina catches him at his sleeve.

“Wait a second.”

Al turns around immediately.

Felina’s not talking very loudly, so it doesn’t make a scene or anything, but Al can still hear her quite clearly over the busy Atrium. “So I appreciate you being here for me and all, but”—” She hesitates. “Don’t you think I should go in there alone?”

Al mulls it over in his head. “I mean, sure”, he says, uncertain. There’s no real reason for him to be there, is there?

Something goes soft in Felina’s face, in a way Al can barely bear to look at, so he looks at the floor instead.

“Listen”, Felina says, still talking very quietly, and this time she takes his hand instead, “I just want it all to go right, okay? I don’t want to seem like I’m just some love-sick girl that thinks you’re her saviour or something, this is—it’s different, it’s more important and I don’t want to make that kind of impression. I just want to make sure everything goes perfectly, so—” There’s something in her voice, a slight stutter. “—so we can be happy.”

“Yes”, Al says, his throat suddenly tight, “of course.”

It’s smart in a way Al hasn’t really considered. He’s a Potter and when he does something drastic—or when he does anything, really, there are whispers. It makes sense that she wouldn’t want to be confronted with that kind of impact right away at the ministry of all places. Al basically doesn’t want to be confronted with it at any time. It’s hard to evade though, if anything he can ignore it.

So he waves after her as she gets into the lift. She flashes him a nervous smile, then the doors close and she is gone.

Al’s smile fades as he looks down at the badge on his chest.

_Moral Support._

What is he supposed to do now?

* * *

It doesn’t take him a long time until he gets into another lift.

Al isn’t sure if it makes sense to describe him as an impatient person, in a way it feels like he’s spending most of his life waiting for one thing or the other—that he finally figures out what he’s doing or maybe just for things to get better. Not that they are particularly bad, the opposite actually, but that doesn’t mean the thought isn’t still there.

So waiting is fine, or at the very least, he’s used to it.

Just standing around waiting, however is a whole other story. It only takes Al about five minutes to feel stupid just standing in the Atrium. Objectively, he knows that nobody really cares what he’s doing there and most of the people here are way too busy to pay any closer sort of attention to him, but he can’t help it. He just feels like he’s on display.

He’s intimately familiar with the feeling, with his family being his family, and at some point he was even used enough to it that it barely bothered him anymore, but that’s not really the case anymore. Most people he interacts with, even in the wizarding world, know him at least a little. To them, he’s lost the mystery of being Harry Potter’s son, and now they’re just used to him, which makes it easier for them to ignore the fact and just treat him like any other person.

Al doesn’t go to the ministry all that often.

Still, that doesn’t really mean people are looking at him—the employees here must have more important things to do. Still, it feels like they are. So maybe it’s not really his person or family that makes him feel awkward and stupid and watched, but the fact that he’s just standing around, being a waste of space that evidently doesn’t have anything better to do.

It’s not like he does, have anything better to do, but—

Still, as he lets his eyes wander over the board that displays the different departments and their respective floors, he manages to come up with something that he _can_ do.

Department of Magical Sports and Games.

There he goes.

As he exits the lift on the right floor, Al picks apart his brain what exactly Scorpius’ task in this department is, but he can’t remember. There was some kind of conversation about betting that he recalls, and Scorpius was having lots of ideas about how it could be organised, but there’s no telling if that was (vaguely) part of his task or another one of his—uh, extracurricular projects.

Well, that means he’ll just have to try his luck.

Al opens one of the office doors at random, without even as much as properly reading the card that announces its specific purpose.

What faces him at the other side of the door is almost enough to make him shut the door and scream, but growing up in his childhood home at Grimmauld Place that, while mostly child-proof and completely harmless, still managed to reveal a certain amount of mildly horrifying sights, must have steeled him for the experience.

Still, the multiple life-size posters are, well, they are a bit of a sight to behold. _At least,_ Al thinks dimly, _my mum isn’t on there._

Probably because she isn’t an active player anymore, but he is grateful, nevertheless. That might have traumatised him beyond repair.

It takes him a few seconds to get over the shock of having multiple Quidditch player aiming right for his face (in a poster, but still) and by the time he is done, the three people working in the office are staring at him expectantly.

None of them are Scorpius.

“Excuse me”, Al says, remembering his manners just a little too late, “I’m looking for Scorpius Malfoy?”

His voice thins a little out at the end, expecting some kind of answer. What he doesn’t expect are the mix of scared looks and extremely angry glares that face him.

There is a beat of silence and Al tries to figure out how he could have possibly offended these people.

“They moved him to Law Enforcement”, one of them says eventually, with a voice that seems more appropriate to use to describe the Chamber of Secrets rather than simply another department of your own workplace.

“Alright”, Al says, “Thank you.”

He closes the door and wonders what the hell just happened. Well, maybe Scorpius can tell him about that, if he has time. Felina, by all estimates, won’t be done for a little while.

Al gets back on the lift and makes his way a couple of stories up.

Several memos exit it with him when the voice announces the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Al listens a little closer this time, trying to figure out which division Scorpius is likely to belong to.

He’s not very successful. It’s not going to be the Auror Bureau, and the Magical Law Enforcement Patrol seems unlikely, too, but other than that it’s basically a toss-up. Scorpius is capable of doing a lot of different things, and usually he just does a lot more than he’s supposed to.

That leaves either the _Improper Use of Magic Office_ or the _Wizengamot Administrative Services_.

Al sighs and opens the door to the first one. He comes up in another hallway, with more doors. Looks like this office has tons of subdivisions. It makes kind of sense, considering it’s tasked with a pretty big job, but still. What a joy.

Crucially, there is also some sort of secretary he can ask.

 _That,_ Al thinks idly, _is one of the entry-level ministry jobs they haven’t tried to task Scorpius with yet._ He doesn’t even want to imagine how Scorpius would manage to spice being a front desk person up.

Well, for now it doesn’t matter.

“Hello”, he says a little awkwardly. The boy behind the counter seems vaguely familiar, but Al can’t place him. At the same time it’s painfully obvious that the guy knows _him,_ which is always a nice situation to be in. Not. Before Al can start feeling self-conscious about his muggle clothes again, he makes himself rasp out his question about Scorpius’ whereabouts.

Luckily, this guy doesn’t seem horrified at the mention of the name, but rather pleased, which is certainly a nice surprise. Scorpius has never really had a good reputation, a combination of his family name and the way some people can’t really deal with his intensity, a fact that Al finds pretty unfair, considering Scorpius is unfailingly kind and dedicates so much of his time to actually improve the world. They joke a lot about him just wanting to annoy his superiors, but—yeah.

Underage magic it is, then.

When Al finally finds the right door, Scorpius is sitting at one of the desks, frowning over some kind of letter.

He looks up at the creak of the door and Al can see the evolution of his expression from surprise to happiness.

“Al!”, Scorpius says, a little too loud in the tiny office, but his colleague doesn’t seem too bothered. She’s watching some kind of magical orb—Al recognises it as an instrument that can show the impact of a spell on a larger scale, very useful for navigation.

Al waves sheepishly. “Hi.”

“You’re back!”, Scorpius exclaims. He pushes himself away from his desk in his wheelchair and comes closer, his eyes searching Al’s whole body as if Al might have grown an extra limp over the summer.

He hasn’t. At least not that he knows of.

“I’m back.”, Al confirms.

Scorpius is already pushing himself over to Al to come up and give him a somewhat awkward hug. It’s awkward because Al is standing up and Scorpius is still sitting, but Al doesn’t mind that much. He’s happy to see his friend either way.

“I thought you’d be another week or so”, Scorpius says as he lets him go.

Al shrugs. It doesn’t feel right to bring up his real reasons right now, everything with Felina and the mafia and all that craziness—it’s too long a story for a place like this with people he doesn’t know. Besides, he wants Rose there, too, when he tells it eventually. He hopes he’ll have some kind of plan then. He’ll be able to tell them how this thing is going to work and they almost won’t think he’s crazy. Or if they do, Al will at least be comfortable thinking it’s not entirely justified.

Not to mention the fact he’s not entirely convinced that smuggling Felina in the country like that isn’t illegal on at least one level, and that’s the kind of thing one probably shouldn’t mention in the middle of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement of all places.

“It just turned out this way”, he says instead, “I see you, uh, widened your horizons again?” He gestures around Scorpius’ new office, redirecting the conversation.

Al didn’t expect Scorpius’ smile to be so big.

“New department, yes.” The woman on the other table snorts, but Scorpius says it like it’s an achievement.

“So what are you doing here?” Scorpius isn’t so easily distracted.

Al shrugs again. He’s already decided that he can’t explain right now. “Checking in with you, I suppose. Making sure you know I’m still alive?”

Scorpius squints at Al’s badge.

“Moral Support?”, he reads.

“Well, you have to tell the phone booth something”, Al says, evading the question.

Scorpius isn’t deterred. Or maybe he just knows Al quite well. “Any news, then?”

Al steps on his feet. He’s good at secrets, and he can keep this one a little longer, but he’s not going to lie. “No, well, kind of. You’ll see.”

Scorpius shrugs. “Alright then. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Al grimaces. “You know me. I never do any smart things.”

Scorpius smiles at the statement but doesn’t quite laugh. Al doesn’t blame him. It was supposed to be a joke, but it doesn’t quite land. There’s certainly some truth in it, Al has made too much stupid decisions to deny that, but that doesn’t mean it applies here. Is he being stupid, bringing Felina to London with him? No, he decides, he’s just doing what’s right. Smart doesn’t have anything to do with it.

“Not a very good Ravenclaw, are you?”, Scorpius teases

“I would have made a worse Gryffindor.”

Right that second the orb Scorpius’ co-worker is holding lights up.

“Work for you, Malfoy!”, she says.

Al looks back at Scorpius, about to excuse himself, when he catches the way his friends’ eyes light up. That’s—well, kind of unexpected. Of course, Scorpius has always loved his job and even when he didn’t, he talked himself into loving it, but this is something else. Al can’t wait to hear about it.

“We’ll get together soon, then”, Al says as a way of farewell, “So you can tell me about all your news and stuff.” He doesn’t mean it in a conspicuous way, it’s just that obviously things have changed for Scorpius over the summer and Al wants to know what that’s all about.

Scorpius grins. “Right back to you, Mr. Moral Support.”

Al waves and stumbles back out of the door. So much for keeping things lowkey. Oh well, he’ll tell Scorpius and Rose soon enough anyway. He just has to talk to Felina about it first. She’ll like them for sure. It’s really hard not to like Rose and Scorpius, in Al’s opinion.

Al is still lost in thought, just passing the front desk of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, when another voice calls out behind him, familiar as the watch in Al’s pocket.

“Al?”

Al turns around and—there he is.

“Uhh—hi, dad!”, he manages to get out.

He’d completely forgotten that this was his father’s workplace, too. The Auror Bureau, of course, is also a part of Magical Law Enforcement, so it’s not all that unexpected, really. Al is still a little thrown off by it. Technically, it should be a lot more startling for his father to find Al here, but _he_ doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

Al lets himself be hugged.

“So you’re back home?”, Harry asks as he lets go of him.

Al nods. “Yeah, since yesterday. Just getting settled back in.” He looks down at his muggle clothes again. He feels even more uncomfortable in them now, even though it’s just his father and he sees him in this attire all the time. It’s something about the place, or maybe the unexpectedness of the meeting.

Harry’s face closes in a little. “You are alright, aren’t you? You don’t—you aren’t here to report anything, are you?”

Al almost jumps at the suggestion. It makes sense, though, for his father to assume that. Why else would Al randomly show up in Law Enforcement? “No, no, nothing like that. I was just paying Scorpius a visit.”

Harry’s face relaxes a little.

“How are you and mum doing?”, Al asks.

“Good, we’re good”, his father says, but he looks a little distracted, “Lily’s come home for the summer.”

“Oh?” Even Al can hear his own voice brighten.

“Yes, she’ll be glad to hear you’re back.”

Al smiles. “Me too.”

Suddenly he remembers where they are and the fact that Felina might already be waiting back in the lobby for him, not to mention the huge stack of paper in his father’s arms.

“Anyway, I should go. You look like you’re really busy, I shouldn’t be holding you up.”

His father looks down at the papers and there is something tired and weary in his gaze. “Yeah…”

Al’s almost out the door, when his father says: “See you on Sunday, then!”

Al hastily gives his confirmation without looking back.

* * *

Felina is quiet on their way back. It’s not that unusual, she’s a quiet person, but still. You would think she’d have a lot to talk about, considering how their last few days have been going.

 _But maybe,_ Al thinks, _it’s just that. Maybe she’s just overwhelmed._ That only makes sense, really.

“Are you okay?”, he asks, despite that.

“I’m good”, she says, but much like his dad, she sounds a little distracted.

“Everything go alright? They believed you?”

Felina bites her lip. “They have to check my case. You know, if I’m really in danger in—where I came from. And if it ‘concerns the Wizarding Community’. Otherwise I will have to try again with the muggles.”

Al frowns. “Surely it must, right? They want you for your magic and besides, you said some of them are wizards, too. That has to concern the Wizarding Community.”

“I don’t know”, Felina says, “I hope so.”

“Anything else they wanted?”

“They asked me a lot of questions. And administrative stuff. You know.”

Al nods, and they walk the rest of the way in silence.

On the threshold of their door, Al stops. “It’ll all work out”, he says.

Felina doesn’t say anything, but her hand comes up to press his, and for now, that’s enough.

* * *

The next couple of days happen in a bit of a blur. Al needs to get back to work and with that, he slips back into his usual routine a bit—but just a bit, because things are still very different. Felina is here, now, and there all kinds of things to sort out.

She has to go back to the ministry and brings back the forms so Al can help her with them. They go to get some clothes for her, too. She’s only brought one change and even before that, Al isn’t sure how many more she even owned. There’s no use to having many things when you are always travelling.

Between that, and work, and the usual things Al needs to get done for Fawley (though right now, it’s mostly just about catching up with mail from June and dealing with extremely urgent stuff, because, frankly, Al doesn’t have time for anything else) they haven’t had the chance to actually go to see places and people.

Al knows that Felina, who, like most people, doesn’t sleep and wake the crazy times Al does has done a bit of exploring herself around London in the mornings, when Al has slipped into bed after work, but that’s different. It’s muggle London, for one, and even besides that, it’s not Al’s London. He hasn’t gotten the chance to show her his places and tell her the little stories that go along with them.

It also means that she hasn’t really seen any of Wizarding London yet, besides the ministry, and hasn’t met anyone. Well, except Fawley, of course. It’s the thing Al looks forward to when he goes to mail what feels like that thousandth letter.

Sunday kind of sneaks up on Al a little and it takes him until that morning—or, more accurately, that noon, when he gets up, to remember that he has plans. Well, more plans then usual, anyway.

“It’s Sunday.”, he says and resists the urge to hit his forehead with the palm of his hand.

Fawley, sat in the art room, seems amused. “Are you surprised by that?”

Al doesn’t dignify this with a response.

Felina is curled up in a chair in the corner, almost like a cat. She’s holding one of Al’s old school books in her hands. “You are not catholic, are you?”

Al blinks. “No, why would I--?”

She shrugs. “Catholic people care about Sundays.”

Al makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “No, I’m not—it’s just—I visit my parents on Sundays. I forgot it was so soon.”

“Well”, Fawley says, “They do happen once a week.”

Al throws him a look.

Then he looks at Felina.

He takes a deep breath. “I go to see my parents on Sundays. For dinner. Usually.”

He can’t read her face.

“Your parents?”

Al nods.

“Do you—you do want me to come, right?” She looks back at him sounding unsure.

“Yeah—I mean, of course. If that’s alright. You don’t have to, if you’re not—”

Al isn’t sure what he’s trying to say and it doesn’t really come out either way.

“Of course I want to come”, Felina says, “If you’re really fine with it.”

Elation rushes up in Al. “Of course I am—why wouldn’t I?”

Felina shrugs, again in the way that isn’t casual at all. “It is your family. That is a big deal.”

Al smiles, sheepishly. “So you should meet them, right?”

Felina smiles.

“That settles that, then”, Fawley says and Al almost flinches. He kind of forgot the old man was still in the room. Knowing him, that was probably his way of reminding Al of that.

“Yeah”, Al says.

* * *

Felina’s nervous, Al can tell.

“My parents are really nice.”, Al says.

“I am sure they are.”, Felina replies, but she still sounds tense.

“My sister will be there, too.”, Al says, suddenly remembering what his father had told him.

“Lily?” Al loves that she remembers.

“Yeah, she’s back from the US, apparently. I’m sure you’ll like her. She’s the best.”

There’s no question there. Not everyone likes Lily, but everyone who doesn’t is an idiot, in Al’s humble opinion. He doesn’t care if he’s biased or not.

“I am sure she is lovely”, Felina replies, her tone of voice not really changing.

Al isn’t sure if he can blame her. He’s nervous, too.

It’s not that he thinks Felina won’t like his family, because there really isn’t a reason for her not to. It’s just that he doesn’t quite know the etiquette for this. It’s not really anything he’s done before, and neither of his siblings have set a real example for this kind of situation.

Lily, as far as Al can tell, has never really been all that interested in dating during Hogwarts and most of the guys she hung out with were old family friends, anyway, so awkward introductions weren’t really a thing with any of her friends.

And James, well. James has been historically unlucky with his love life. Or maybe just unhappy, Al isn’t too sure what’s the most accurate. In either case, none of his brother’s disasters seem like an appropriate model for what this is supposed to be like.

 _This_ , Al thinks dryly, _is why I was always the good kid. The uncomplicated one._

Those days are long gone, but still.

Really, the closest he’s come to a situation like this was when he brought Scorpius home to stay with him for the first time. His best friend from school, besides Rose of course. She, at the time, probably would have been very upset at the notion. Funny how things change.

Al doesn’t really think that he understood the implications of their friendship back when it first happened. He knew of course that their parents didn’t really get along when they were at Hogwarts, and, in an abstract sense, he thinks he also knows that Scorpius’ family had been on the wrong side of the war. But he didn’t truly understand what that meant. Scorpius was funny and kind and Al liked him a lot and that was that.

If he had had a proper grasp on the situation back then, Al thinks, he might have felt a lot like he does right now.

They’re walking to Grimmauld Place, because Al, as a general rule, more or less walks everywhere. When it’s too far, he uses the tube. It’s the side effect of not having a chimney and his apparition issues. So far, Felina hasn’t complained yet, but then again, she’s used to being on the streets the majority of the day.

“So this is kind of an old house”, Al explains, “where I grew up.”

“I know”, Felina says, “you told me.”

She smiles tentatively. “It sounded kind of cool.”

Al tries to remember what he told her about his childhood home. Weird portraits that don’t scream anymore because forever ago, his father hired a really good curse breaker? House elf heads on stakes? All the other really toxic stuff that his father also hired a curse breaker to remove? Probably not, that sounds more disturbing than anything else. The house hasn’t been like that since long before Al was born, of course, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come up whenever anyone talks about it.

Oh. It was probably the secret passageways he told her about. Those are kind of neat. Al is pretty sure his parents don’t even know about all of them, but that’s part of the fun. He and his siblings always had a great deal of fun with them growing up.

“The thing is”, Al says, picking back up his line of thought from before, “it’s kind of invisible.”

“What?”, Felina asks, “Really?”

Al can’t tell if she’s surprised or excited by the prospect. Probably both.

“Well, kind of. A charm was put on it forever ago so that only people who are in on the secret can see it, because—” Al trails off. That is definitely too long of a story for right now.

“That sounds really useful”, Felina says and Al is reminded of all the times she had to hide. All the times he doesn’t quite know about, not in detail. He wonders if she’s thinking about it, too.

Felina still doesn’t like to talk about it, not in detail. It’s not the time for it, anyway.

“It’s a bit of a nuisance, honestly.”, Al says, “The original secret keeper died a long time ago, so now everyone he told is a secret keeper in his place. So there are about thirty people that can let you in on the secret, but if you don’t have any of them on hand, you’re a little out of luck.”

“So you’re not keeping it a secret anymore?”, Felina asks, focusing entirely on the wrong part of what Al’s just said. Well, not on the wrong part, but not on the part Al was trying to get at.

“No”, Al says immediately, then he reconsiders. His father is a little careful about who can know, simply so his house isn’t stormed by reporters or nosy gossips every time _Witch Weekly_ publishes another stupid article on how he’s having an affair with Aunt Hermione or Viktor Krum or possibly both of them at the same time.

And then there’s the other reason, namely that even after all these years, the world still isn’t quite safe for people like Harry Potter and his family. Or his friends. Al is almost surprised by how his throat constricts. It’s been years since that, long enough that it doesn’t hurt that much, most of the times, and sometimes Al forgets for long stretches of time. He’s sure his parents don’t though. Neither do Rose or Aunt Hermione or Hugo, that’s for sure.

“It’s a safety precaution, I guess”, he amends, “But it’s not a real secret. They put the charm there long before I was born and, you know, those were different times.”

“That’s nice”, Felina says, “that times can pass like that.”

Al shrugs. “Your bad times are passing, too, you know.”

She nods. “I know.” Then something in her voice changes. “Wait, are you saying that I can’t see your house?”

“Yes, that’s kind of what I’ve been trying to say”, Al admits. He’s a bit bad with getting out what he’s trying to say, but Felina already knows that about him. By now, he thinks, there’s hardly anything about him that she doesn’t know.

“And it is not enough if you just tell me? The secret?”

“I’m not a secret-keeper”, Al says, “But that just means I need to get my mum or dad to let you in. And after that you should be able to see it just fine.”

“Okay”, Felina says in a way that makes it seem like the sentence isn’t finished, but she doesn’t say anything else.

“Are you nervous?”, Al asks. He didn’t want to, before, but somehow, he can’t restrain himself anymore.

Felina takes a sharp breath. “Yes”, she says, “I am very nervous.”

“Me, too.”, Al admits, “But it’ll be fine. It’ll all be fine.”

He hears her swallow, but nevertheless, when she speaks again, she says: “I believe you.”

* * *

Al feels really weird to tell Felina to wait for him in the middle of Grimmauld Place while he goes in, but there isn’t really anything to be done about that. She literally can’t see the house. At least there are no reporters lingering outside, which means there hasn’t been any major scandals lately, real or imagined. Since Al doesn’t follow any of that, in an act of preservation for his sanity, that is always a possibility. 

He can already smell the food from the hallway. Curry. That’s good, his father makes a nice curry. Not that Felina is picky about food, it’s kind of the same as with tiny beds, there is very little she can’t handle, but then again, she’s Italian and Italian food is inherently better than British cuisine, if that even is a thing. But for now she’s liked everything that Al’s made for the three of them, so that bodes well.

Why the hell is he even thinking about this?

“Dad?”, he yells into the hallway, “Mum?”

Neither of his parents answer, but another figure storms into the hall and crashes right into his chest.

“Al!”, Lily practically yells in his ear.

Al pulls his arms around her to keep her from falling and manages to refrain from flinching from the volume. Mostly because he’s really happy to see her.

“Lily!”, he says, notably more quietly.

“I’m so happy you’re here!”, Lily says.

She still sounds as British as ever, which is a relief, even though Al didn’t really think a year in the US would change her accent. Still, it’s nice to hear.

“Me too”, he says as a way of answer, then corrects himself. “I’m really glad to see you.”

Lily rolls her eyes. “It’s your own fault if you always manage to leave the country when I’m right here, seriously. Come on, Dad’s making the good curry and we can’t start eating without you—”

“Oh, so that’s the real reason you wanted me to show up”, Al says automatically, the corners of his mouth twitching.

Lily hits him lightly on the arm, then grabs it to pull him into the kitchen.

“Hey, wait a second”, Al says, before she can literally deposit him in his seat.

“Hi, mum”, he says to his mother who’s already sitting in hers. 

He doesn’t need to look to know that Lily’s rolling her eyes again. “What, do you need to make some kind of announcement or something?”

Al clears his throat awkwardly. “Yes, actually, kind of.”

There’s a small pause. Both his sister and his mother are looking at him. Al wishes he were better at expressing himself.

“It’s just—I have a guest”, he says, unsure how else to say it. His eyes dart to his mum. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

He suddenly realises that he should have maybe given them a heads-up. Like all the best realisations, it comes a bit late. Well, there’s nothing he can do about it now. It’ll be fine.

“Of course not”, his mum says, “We always have some more space here, you know that.”

She’s already standing up. “I’m guessing you need some help at the door?”

“Yeah”, Al says, “yeah, that would be great.”

They walk back out the front door together, Lily trailing after them, but staying in the hallway.

Al can feel his hands getting a little sweaty. It’s ridiculous, really.

Felina, as they open the door, is still standing right where Al left her, staring intently at something that Al can’t quite see. Possibly the space he disappeared into earlier from her perspective.

“Is that her?”, his mother asks, in an entirely different tone of voice than before that makes Al instantly think _she knows._ He’s not even that sure what it is she knows, she just does.

She probably doesn’t know that Al sort of got married in a foreign country to escape from the mafia, as that isn’t really the kind of thing someone guesses, but still.

“Yeah”, Al says.

“Alrighty”, his mum mutters in that embarrassing way only parents can.

Al takes a deep breath as they step down the front steps.

Felina blinks at them, obviously confused.

“Hey”, Al says hurriedly, “Sorry, that took a little.”

“It’s fine”, Felina says, still staring at the space of street in front of her. “I really have no idea where you two just came from.”

“The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix is on Grimmauld Place 12”, Ginny says, loud and clear.

For a hot second, Felina stares at her. “Excuse—“, she starts, but then the magic must set in, because she looks behind them at the house that, from Al’s point of view, has always been there.

“Wow!”, she breathes, “That’s incredible!”

Al has to grin. “It’s kind of cool”, he admits and Felina shoves him lightly.

It’s then that he remembers his mum is there, too, and Felina must realise it in the exact same second, as Al basically feels her gaze shift.

“Let’s talk inside”, Ginny Potter says. She’s smiling.

As soon as the door opens, Lily is on them. Not literally, but she’s quite obviously peeking at Felina with open curiosity.

Al cringes slightly on Felina’s behalf, who’s always been uncomfortable with being _seen_ in any notable capacity, not to mention open curiosity.

To make everything even better, his dad has come out of the kitchen, too, probably to see what’s going on and why they aren’t yet sat at the table, enjoying curry.

Al clears his throat again, figuring that part of it is kind of his job.

“Felina”, he says, “That’s my mum and dad, and my sister, Lily.” He gestures at the people in question as if it isn’t abundantly clear who is who in this situation.

“It is very nice to meet you”, Felina says, “I am Amy.”

Al can basically see their brains doing the processing, the questions coming up in their heads. Al hopes they’ll be nice not to ask about everything immediately. Felina spooks easily and Al really doesn’t want to spook—

“Are you his girlfriend?”, Lily asks.

Al really wishes she saw the point on being subtle for once in her life, but of course she doesn’t. But before he can say or do anything, Felina’s already answered.

“Yes”, she says, and there is neither hesitation nor uncertainty in her words.

Oh. So that’s that settled then.

Al doesn’t know what he would have said anyway. That they’re actually married? No. He’ll ease them into that. In a few years or so.

Al watches his parents collectively look from her to him. Al looks away and shrugs. He can tell that they are surprised. That makes sense, he supposes, but it’s not like he can do anything about it now.

“It’s very nice to meet you, too.”, his mother says and thankfully she doesn’t add anything like “Now if we had only heard anything about you before.”

Felina, of course, knows that Al hasn’t told his parents about her, but Al gathers a comment of that sort would still create some tension.

The rest of Al’s family echoes the sentiment, and with that done, they can finally move on to dinner. That’s good, because not only is Al getting a little hungry, but he also figures as soon as they’re eating, the awkwardness will ease up a bit.

And it does, at first.

Al can tell that Felina is trying really hard to be on her best behaviour. Not that her behaviour is usually bad, but still. She’s definitely trying.

She doesn’t know yet that that’s not really the kind of thing that impresses Al’s parents. Then again, Al isn’t really sure what is. He knows that he certainly hasn’t done well at that the past couple of years, so maybe he shouldn’t be talking. At least this isn’t exactly putting them off, either.

“This is really very good”, Felina says, gesturing at her curry, “Al told me that you are an excellent cook, Mr. Potter.”

Harry looks at Al with a raised eyebrow. “Has he now? He certainly doesn’t tell me that.”

Al huffs, almost offended. “Of course I do.” He thinks about if for a second and concludes that surely he must be mentioning it from time to time. “At the very least I come back here every week, don’t I?”

Felina snickers. “That could just be because you’re too lazy to cook.”

“Hey! You know that I cook all the time. Besides, you know that I said that about dad! You should be defending me here!”

She rolls her eyes. “Yes, of course. You have told me everything about what a good son you are.”

Lily giggles.

Al throws her a dark look. “At least I’m still around. Nobody even knows what you and James get up to across the great lake.”

Lily’s about to say something in return, but Felina is faster.

“Yes, Al told me that you are studying in the USA. That is really impressive, I think.”

Lily shrugs. “Mostly it’s far away. And no wizards, at least not at uni.”

Like those are the two main selling points. And maybe they are, for her. Al wouldn’t know. He hasn’t been here for the decision process and they never really talked about it afterwards.

“But you like it?”, Felina asks, maybe a little too intensely.

Lily nods. “Yes”, she says, “yes, I really like it there.”

“That’s good”, Felina replies, “I hope I will still like it here, even if you don’t think it is that great.”

Lily crunches up her nose. “No, no, I guess London is fine. It’s just that I have always been here and everyone knows about me and that always felt a little—I don’t know, it’s just good to be away. I feel freer.”

“Let’s hope London can be your free place, Felina”, Al says, without thinking. Only when he’s already said it, he realises that it might sound a little weird to his family when don’t really know her situation.

But if Lily notices that, she doesn’t focus on it. “Felina”, she says, as if trying on the word for size, “Is that some kind of nickname?”

Al feels himself blush. “Oh, that.” He looks over at Felina. “It’s a bit like an inside joke, I guess. I call her that a lot.”

Al honestly can’t imagine calling her anything else. He would manage eventually, he supposes, if he really tried, but there’s not really any reason for him to do that.

“Hm.”, Lily says, and Al tries not to let himself think about what she’s thinking.

“Where are you from, then?”, Ginny asks.

Al’s eyes fall back in Felina just in time to see her flinch just the tiniest bit, but he doubts anyone else has noticed.

“I am from Italy”, she says, but doesn’t clarify any further.

Al can basically feel his father’s eyes go between the two of them. He hasn’t said much during the whole meal, which always makes Al a little nervous.

“I only came here a very short time ago”, Felina continues and that’s how Al can tell she really is trying. She’s not one to offer information lightly, especially if she’s not even explicitly asked about it.

“So the two of you met there?”, Ginny asks again.

Felina nods.

“You must excuse the questioning, it’s just that it seems like Al has told you quite a bit about us, but we haven’t really heard anything about you at all”, Ginny continues, “So it’s a bit of a surprise…”

Felina smiles. “I can understand that. I am afraid that is my fault, I asked Al not to tell too many people about me.”

“Oh”, Lily says, like that makes total sense to her, “So how long has it been then?”

She really doesn’t have any qualms about asking stuff.

Al looks at Felina to ensure she’s fine, but she looks back at him openly. It’s still a strange sight, he’s so used to her being guarded. This really must be hard for her, but she’s doing so well…

“We met almost three years ago”, Al says.

The table becomes silent for a second.

“Oh, wow”, Lily says a second later, “That’s really—that’s very you, Albus Severus.”

Al cringes. “Don’t call me that.”

Lily shrugs flippantly. “Seriously, though, you’re the only person I can ever imagine being this level of secretive!”

Al can’t help but look at Felina. She looks a little shell-shocked, but in an instant, she returns Al’s smile. They both know that between the two of them, Al really isn’t the secretive one.

“Well”, Al says, “In that case you should know better than to be surprised.”

Nobody agrees with him. Al can read it in their faces, still staring at him. It makes him a little uncomfortable, because sure, Felina wouldn’t have liked him to talk about her, but technically, he still could have. She never even explicitly asked him not to.

“What?”, Al asks, throwing his hands in the air, “It’s not that big of a deal!”

It kind of is, but he doesn’t want them to treat it as such.

They let him off the hook, but Al thinks that’s probably more out of courtesy than anything else.

“So what are your plans?”, Harry asks out of the blue.

Al stiffens instantly at the words, simply because he himself hates it so much when anybody asks him that. The reason is purely that Al never has any solid plans and the reminder that he should, really, never makes him feel any good.

Felina, however, hasn’t acquired that particular trauma yet, if only because as of now, she hasn’t really had anyone to ask her that—nor really any future to plan for, but Al doesn’t like to think about that.

They have been looking into programs though for her to do her OWLs and NEWTs in at least some subjects—while Felina is undoubtedly good at a lot of parts of magic, she doesn’t have any credentials, a result of her patchwork magic education.

“Well”, Felina says, “I have only just arrived and I don’t know the magic community here very well yet.”

“We’ll figure it out”, Al says, quickly.

“What did you do back home in Italy?”, Lily asks.

Felina glances at Al very briefly before she answers. “I was a—a street artist.”

“Oh”, Lily says and actually brightens, “So you paint like Al?”

Felina smiles a little and shakes her head. Al is too busy watching her to look at his parents’ faces.

“I don’t know anybody who can paint like Al. I don’t, but I read the future for muggles on the street.”

There’s a beat of silence. It isn’t the kind of thing anyone’s expected. The silence doesn’t read very positive to Al, and apparently Felina can tell as well.

“I know that I should not do that anymore because of the secrecy”, she says hurriedly, “I will find another way to make a living as a seer.”

“A seer?”, Al’s father echoes and Al is unpleasantly reminded of his own reaction to Felina’s divination. That wasn’t his best moment. 

Felina’s faster than him at reacting and apparently she can read the atmosphere just as well.

“You think I am a liar.”, she states, voice high and indignant. It’s not a question.

“I have found”, Harry says calmly, “That sometimes people believe to have gifts that they don’t, or only in a very limited capacity, and this particular branch of magic—”

“Dad—“, Al starts, but it’s already too late.

Felina’s standing up, her eyes sparkling in the wild way Al’s always admired. Now, though, he’s scared. Scared for how this might play out.

“I am not a liar and I am not—incompetent—”

“Felina”, Al says, but she doesn’t listen.

“I can prove it to you—give me your hand.”

She holds hers out.

“Felina”, Al says again, switching to Italian, “You don’t need to prove anything, that is not your job. He will see for himself in time.”

Al had. It’s kind of impossible not to, with Felina.

But she just shakes her head, answering in Italian as well. “If they can’t believe me about this, how can they have any respect for me? They will think I am a cheater and a liar. Not the kind of person that deserves you.”

That, of course, is utter nonsense. There’s nothing about Al to deserve. But the finite and angry way she says it makes it hard to argue with her and Al, frankly doesn’t even know what to say.

Felina is still standing up, holding her hand out, looking directly at Al’s father. Lily is standing to the side, the expression of her face frozen, like she isn’t prepared for that turn of the evening.

Al, frankly, isn’t either.

“Now, now”, Ginny says, not having understood Al and Felina’s Italian conversation, “There is no need—”

“I think there is a need”, Felina says, almost calmly, but still with a ferocious energy, “This is very important to me.”

Harry and Ginny share a look. It’s a practiced one like it can only happen between people who have known each other for a very long time. Al can’t quite read the conversation there, but whatever it is, Harry relents.

“Well”, he says, calmly but not quite kindly, “If you insist.”

He comes around the table and Felina sits down at his side, taking his hand tracing his palm with her hand in practiced motions like Al has seen her doing so many times before.

Years of watching her work have taught him that of all the different forms of divination, palm-reading requires the least preparation, but it also isn’t very precise. It tells you about big life developments, not details about tomorrow’s weather or even daily happenstances.

Felina traces, then retraces. She takes a closer look.

Harry isn’t looking at her, but when Al goes to gauge his reaction, their eyes meet.

His father doesn’t look like he believes in a positive outcome of this experience, or even like he’s very keen on it at all. More than anything, he looks really tired. So tired, that for a moment, the situation and Felina and divination and everything that’s going on cease from Al’s mind and suddenly, he’s really, really worried, though he doesn’t quite know what about.

“This is really strange”, Felina says and the moment is over. Al redirects her attention back to her. She doesn’t look very angry anymore, just genuinely surprised.

“This is a very eventful life in general, but the weirdest part—it says that you died. A long time ago, you died, but you are still alive—this is—you must have come very close—”

Harry Potter pulls his hand back from her, very fast. “Just stop.”

Felina pulls her own hand back. Her anger seems completely gone, replaced with wonder and sincerity. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought up bad memories—”

“If anything”, Harry says, and Al has never before heard his father like this, his father who is so kind and patient and has listened to everyone of James’ lame jokes and Lily’s inscrutable ramblings and talks to Al patiently even when he’s at his most monosyllabic, “you should have tried at least a little harder. That’s just the most basic part of my life story. I’ve been almost dead a hundred times. Everybody knows that.”

“No”, says Felina, “I mean yes, that is what I meant about your eventful life, but that one time was different—”

“Are you referring to the time I was hit by the killing curse as a baby? It really must have been very hard to pick that out of a book of contemporary history.”

Felina blinks, confused, Ginny looks alarmed, Lily is still frozen.

Al—Al doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. But it decidedly isn’t good. Somewhere, something has shifted and it needs to be unshifted as soon as possible.

“Dad”, he says, “Dad, stop!”

Again, he’s ignored.

“You really don’t need to be a seer to know this about my past. It’s only the most well-known life story in all of Wizarding Britain.”

For a moment, Felina looks shell-shocked. “The most well-known—?”, she mumbles, then without permission, she snatches Harry’s hand back and guides her fingers over it once more, just for a moment.

Expressions fly over her face and now Al really doesn’t understand what is happening, but she settles on something like steely determination.

“Okay then”, she says, “I’ll tell you something about your present instead. That can’t possibly be in the history books.” She barely pauses to breathe. “You are tired, and sad, and exhausted with what you are doing, but you struggle to change it, because of some responsibility—the rest of the world, probably. If you want my advice, you should change it anyway, because there are more than one way to be useful to the rest of the world, but I suppose you don’t want my advice anyway.”

Harry takes a step back, face wide.

“Al”, Felina is speaking Italian again, “Can we leave now, please?”

* * *

Out on the street, Felina’s energy seems to have completely left her. She’s walking back the way they came, fast, and Al almost has to try to keep in step with both her and his racing thoughts.

“Is that true?”, he asks, “What you just said about my dad?”

It might not be the most pressing thing about what just happened, but Al is too confused to properly sort out his priorities.

“Apparently it is public knowledge”, Felina snaps, “So I imagine you would know.”

“Not that”, Al says, “the other thing, about being tired.”

Felina sighs deeply and stands. “Probably, considering how he reacted.”

Al blinks, hard. “What do you mean, probably? Can’t you tell?”

Felina sighs again. “It was a guess, Al. I didn’t actually read him for that one, it was just intuition and being observant.”

“Seriously?”

Felina shrugs. “I guess that means he is right—I am just a cheater.”

Al huffs, offended on her behalf. “I know that’s not true.”

Felina shrugs. “It is always a part of the process. I’ve told you before, it’s not a very precise science, a lot of it has to do with just feeling and trusting your gut.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s all lies.”

“That is a matter of perspective, I suppose.”, Felina says, even though Al knows she doesn’t believe that.

Silence envelopes them for a while as they walk. Al’s still processing in his brain what just happened. And how he’s going to fix it.

Then—“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Al blinks. “What do you mean?”

They’ve almost reached the apartment building now. The walk felt so much faster than the original one.

Felina stops. She turns around and looks at him, the motion familiar and foreign all the same.

When she speaks, her voice sounds like a wire pulled tight. “Let’s go up. We need to talk about this, properly.”

A cold feeling grabs Al’s chest, but there’s nothing to do but nod. Talking is good, right? Talking means they will work this out.

* * *

Felina closes the door to Al’s room carefully. Maybe she doesn’t want Fawley to hear what they are talking about. Al wants to tell her that she can trust him, that he trusts Fawley with everything without question, but it doesn’t seem like the moment.

“Listen”, he says, “I’m so sorry my dad said that to you. It’s not really like him and I’m sure he’ll come around—”

Felina sighs and it sounds like all the air is going out of her. “That’s not the point, Al.”

 _It isn’t?_ If that isn’t the point, what is? Al doesn’t know if he should ask.

“Why didn’t you tell me about him?”, she asks again.

“I—“, Al says, “I did?”

He had talked about all of his family to her, it seems unlikely that his dad wouldn’t have come up.

She’s pacing around the room, which is impressive in its own right because the room really should be to small for that to be feasible. Al is sitting down on the bed, once again motionless and useless.

“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him about his opinion on divination…”, Al starts again but she cuts him off.

“No, not that, forget about that part, I mean—”

She grabs for her duffle bag, the one she brought all her stuff in and starts looking for something in it. Her hand is halfway in when she looks back up at him.

Al stares back, helplessly.

She pulls her hand out, some kind of magazine in it. Al recognises it as _Witch Weekly,_ one of the major gossip magazines that Al avoids like the pest.

“I mean, your dad is Harry Potter! Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

She hasn’t been yelling, but the silence after it feels deafening like she did.

“But”, Al says, voice slow and deliberate, “I did.”

Her hands are still clutching at the stupid magazine and then something strange happens to Al. It’s like time is speeding up and slowing down at the same time, the spaces in his brain closing for anything but what’s happening right there.

“I told you right when I met you”, he says and suddenly the scene flashes clear before his eyes.

“I told you”, he repeats, “I said ‘I am Al. Al Potter.’ And then you said ‘So you said.’” There’s a tiny pause. Al thinks his thoughts might be melting in his brain, their flow suddenly slow, but so much clearer than usual. “I told you and you didn’t care.”

“You just said you were Al Potter!”, Felina says, “That doesn’t mean anything!”

Al blinks. He thinks he can actually feel the motion on the skin right under his eyes, as if his senses are somehow enhanced, too. Maybe it’s that in moments like this, your body already knows that they are important, before your brain catches up to that and strives to record it for eternity in the sharpest image.

“You are a witch. You knew I was a wizard. I told you I was a Potter. I told you.”

Never in the entire history of his life has “I am Al Potter” not meant anything.

“I didn’t know that meant something!”, Felina says. She’s still not yelling, but she’s talking very fast, even now that time is so slow. “What _does_ it mean?”

Al blinks again, twice this time. His brain registers the sensation.

“You don’t know?”

It seems impossible, like something that shouldn’t happen, that couldn’t happen.

“I know that he is important enough to be on the cover of some weird gossip magazine, that is all I know!”

She tosses it over at Al. He’s almost surprised that his hand can reach out in time to catch it, but it does.

There is another weird rumour on the cover about some kind of affair his father is supposed to have with some woman Al doesn’t know. The one about Aunt Hermione they’ve been cycling ever since Al’s fifth year must have finally died from the sheer wrongness and the general disgustingness of it. Or it’s just finally gotten boring.

Al looks away, he doesn’t want to be reading that kind of stuff. He never does.

He looks back at Felina.

She’s looking him right in the eye. “Tell me, Al. I got some from his palm, but—”

“I—“, Al says, “I’ll tell you.”

He’s silent for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. He doesn’t know where to start. This has never happened before. Never in his life has somebody known about his magic, but not about his family history. He doesn’t even know where to start.

“There was a war.”, he says, words coming out haltingly, “Two wars. Do you know about the Wizarding Wars?”

Felina nods. “I’ve—my grandma has told me a little, but—I know it hasn’t been that long.”

“There was a bad guy”, Al says, and suddenly his fingers are shaking, “He called himself Lord Voldemort.” He’s not shaking because of the name, he’s never been scared of that name the way some people are, hasn’t been taught to be. It’s something else.

“The war ended when he died.” His words aren’t getting steadier. “Twice. He wasn’t really dead the first time, but he disappeared.”

He’s telling it all out of order and not the right way, but it doesn’t matter.

“My dad—he was a baby, the first time. Lord Voldemort came into his house and killed my grandparents one night, and then he tried the killing curse on my father, but it didn’t work. He disappeared instead. Voldemort, not my dad.”

In another universe, maybe this could have sounded funny. It doesn’t.

Felina nods, very slowly. “I have heard this story.”, she says, “My grandmother says it was a miracle.”

“Yeah”, Al says, voice cracking a little, “That’s what you must have seen on his hand.”

Felina doesn’t argue.

Al takes the time for one breath, then continues. “But Voldemort came back. And then my dad killed him, again. And then the war was over.”

He takes another breath.

“That’s why his name is on that magazine.”

He feels like maybe, the normal passage of time and his brain are coming back to him.

“But it isn’t true”, Al says, “whatever they write, it’s barely ever true, anyway.”

Felina doesn’t react to that, either.

“He’s a hero”, she says, instead, like it’s a great tragedy.

“Yeah”, Al says, and he doesn’t have it in himself to question the fact that in his worse moments, he feels like it is. He can’t ban the feeling, not right now.

“He’s a hero, and you are his son.”

“Yeah”, Al says again and maybe he’s wrong and time is out of control like it never was before. Maybe when someone watches a train wreck. Maybe it’s like that then.

“He’s the kind of person they write gossip articles about.”

“Yeah.”

There is a small pause.

“Where did you even get that from?”, Al asks.

“When I was a the ministry they gave it to me for the waiting time—“ Her voice breaks. “That is why they asked me about that. I had to tell them about my real name, so they would know that was why I was in trouble, and that it was a magical issue, and I said I tricked to change my name to Potter—that is why they were so strange about that—”

“Didn’t you tell them I helped you?”, Al asks. He doesn’t think about how helped isn’t really the right word. He married her. That’s what it was.

“No”, Felina says, empathetically and something in Al’s heart sinks at this. He doesn’t know why, just—

“I wasn’t sure if it was allowed, the way we did it, and I didn’t want to get you in trouble in case there was a law.”, Felina continues, “But I didn’t realise—”

Al feels the tension in her voice and in the room and in himself, really, and he tries to push it all out, for a second.

_It’ll all be fine._

“Listen”, he says, “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought you knew.”

Felina closes her eyes for a second and right then she looks almost like a statue. Then she opens them again and her breathing resumes. She sits down next to Al on the bed, the duffel bag in her lap, now. The magazine lies on the floor, but Al couldn’t care less.

“Of course I didn’t know”, she says and the anger and franticness of her voice is gone, she sounds almost calm, but there is something different there, now. Al looks her in the eyes to figure her out, like he has done before so many times, only sometimes successfully.

She looks—she looks restrained, if anything, as if she’s pulling away. Going away.

“I don’t know about your life here at all.”, she says.

“No!”, Al refutes loudly, saying what his head has been screaming for this entire time. Maybe that’s why his brain feels so weird. It’s just busy blocking out all the nos. “No”, he says again, tries for a little less insane, “You know me. You know all about me. All the important things.”

He knows that he sounds like a cliché, but he can’t help it.

“That is a pretty important things, isn’t it?”, Felina says, “About your dad.”

“No”, Al says, “I mean, yes, but—”

He runs out of words. Yes, his family is important, of course, but they don’t make up who he is. Al has talked to so many people in his life that wanted to speak to Harry Potter’s son and were disappointed when they got him. He’s not all that interesting, when it comes down to it.

“I’m just Al. I’m a British wizard that can’t sleep at night and spends all his time painting. I work a low-wage muggle job, because there’s no money in magic art, but I love it too much to really try and do anything else. And I—” He can’t bring himself to say it. “And I like you. That’s all there really is to me.”

Felina smiles, again in the way Al never wants to see, so sad. He almost can’t bear to look at it.

“Yeah”, she says, and her hand is touching his arm, so lightly. “And I love that.”

She makes a tiny pause and Al so desperately wants to hold on to it, but he can’t. 

“But you’re wrong. It’s not all there is, and pretending it is does no good. I told you, Al, I—”

Her voice breaks, but only for a second. “I can’t be someone who is known.”

She sounds almost apologetic, which is ironic.

“And with you, they will put me on a magazine cover. I can’t be there.”

“I—“, Al says, the conclusion already forming in his head, before she says it. But there’s nothing he can say, is there? His words are gone, because she’s right. If she is with him, she will be on magazine covers, probably many more times than even a normal person would like. But certainly, at the very, very least once, and even that is too much for her.

“We can keep it a secret”, Al says. There are tears forming in his eyes and he hates it, because he can’t think like this. He needs to think. He needs to find a solution. There must be a solution, right?

Felina shakes her head. She’s still so calm, or maybe Al just can’t see the upset. His eyes are swimming. He hopes it is there, even a little bit. That just makes him a worse person, probably, but he doesn’t have the strength to fight that right now.

“There are no secrets, Al”, she says.

Al knows she is right. There are no real secrets in his world, no big ones, and this one would be huge. But he doesn’t want to know that.

“I—“, he says again.

Felina takes his hand into hers and presses it, tight.

“You are a good person, Al”, she says, “But I cannot let people know me.”

When she stands up, opens the door and leaves, the room, duffel bag over her shoulder, Al wants to follow. He wants to get up, hold her back, keep her there. But he knows that he can’t.

He can’t change who he is. And it looks like Felina can’t, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That happened. I am actually dying to know what you all think about--well, all of it really. Thanks for reading and thanks for your patience <3  
> Hope you don't all hate me now :/


	17. (in the end) we will only just remember how it feels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al processes, doubts, let's go off a few of his secrets, thinks, and doesn't think all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I did it!   
> (I get to pretend for a week that the upload schedule isn't a complete illusion!)

Al takes a moment to process.

For a moment, he doesn’t move from the bed.

For a moment, he just sits there on his bed, staring into the dirty stains on the white wall.

Except maybe it isn’t a moment at all, really, because when he dips back into reality, it’s late and his pocket watch starts glowing in his pocket, reminding him that he has to go work the late shift and that he can’t just—sit there.

He has to leave for that. Now.

That means he has been sitting on his bed the entire evening and a portion of what other people would consider the night, but Al isn’t thinking about that. He just grabs his bag, a clean work uniform already inside, and heads out.

He works the bar on autopilot and doesn’t notice how bad his hands are shaking until Cath saves two glasses he almost drops on the floor.

She tries to ask him if he’s okay, but Al shakes off her concern and when their shift ends, he disappears before she can question him properly. Al can’t deal with questions right now. He can’t—he’s not sure if he can deal with anything right now.

He doesn’t hurry on his way home, lets the cooler morning air settle on his face with the first light of the morning. But he doesn’t linger outside either. It’s not a day for lingering.

Back in the flat, Fawley is still asleep, as usual when Al comes back from work. But now the flat feels entirely more deserted than it ever has before and Al is so very tired, from his shift and from his feelings and from being so damn stupid.

He goes to bed and cries for a few hours and eventually, he falls asleep.

* * *

When Al wakes up again, he’s done processing.

When Al wakes up again, his head is hurting and his eyes feel crusty and for a second he doesn’t know why. Then he remembers and every desire to leave his bed at all instantly vanishes.

He should probably go take a shower. He must smell like a sad alcoholic or something. But he doesn’t care enough to actually move. He probably has things to do, but lying there, he can’t come up with any specific tasks.

He’s been so busy with all of Felina’s stuff, suddenly it feels like it’s the only thing he’s been thinking about the past week. It probably has been.

But that’s not his problem anymore, is it? What else is he even supposed to do? It’s not like he ever does anything particularly useful with his life, even when he doesn’t fuck up colossally. He--paints. Runs errands. Stocks the bar. Writes letters. Cooks meals.

 _Right,_ Al thinks. He needs to make something to eat. Fawley—Fawley has been fine the entire summer without him, and years and years before that, but—he needs to make food for Fawley.

It’s another thing he’s probably not actually needed for, but still. The thought is at least enough to get Al out of bed.

Fawley is up, working on his secret project, but switches over to something else when Al comes in. Al doesn’t even find it in himself to be curious about it today. It’s not like it’ll do anyone any good if he knows their secrets.

So Al makes breakfast, tired and uninspired, and probably not as healthy as he should, but it’s all he manages today.

He grabs the stack of letters that are still due to be read and answered and stares at the first for half and hour without reading any words before he gives up on the task.

He could go outside, he thinks, and stare at the street instead of the chaos of paint and art supplies that happen to be in the direction his eyes are pointing. He could go back to his room and stare at the dirty white wall, where there is some privacy, but he can’t be bothered. He doesn’t especially like that room anyway. It’s tiny and soulless and literally only contains his bed and the ten items of clothing he owns.

Al’s a liar. He doesn’t dislike that room, he loves it. Not because it’s nice, because it isn’t. It’s really not nice, but that doesn’t matter, because it’s—

Because Al’s an idiot, that’s why. He’s a bloody idiot.

He thinks about how he would paint that, his own idiocy. It would have to be a huge painting, oil probably. Or, no, watercolours, because those are the most idiotic medium and Al chooses way too often anyway. Just another piece of evidence that he really is idiotic.

Then again, that painting in itself would be the biggest waste of time and space and art supplies ever. A painting detailing his own stupidity. Truly ironic, considering there can’t be a lot of things that are stupider than that. Maybe all of Al’s life decisions, but that’s about it.

He lets his watch remind him it’s time to make dinner before he gets up from the chair he’s been sat in.

Fawley is staring at him over the table, figuring something out in that brain of his. It makes Al’s head hurt, so he puts an end to it.

“Felina didn’t know about my dad. Being associated with me puts her in the spotlight, and she’s scared of that. So she left.”

It’s the plainest he can manage to say it, to explain it, perhaps with the least feeling, and still it hurts to say.

It’s just—it’s so bloody stupid, isn’t it? Al can’t believe how stupid he’s been.

“Oh.”, Fawley says.

Al really doesn’t want to hear his opinion, or even see the look in his eyes. He doesn’t want pity, he has plenty of that for himself.

He also doesn’t want to talk, so he just gets up and goes to clean the kitchen. By hand, because that takes longer.

He’s processed it. Now he just feels bad.

* * *

News travel fast within Al’s family. That has always been true.

At times Al likes it, because that means he doesn’t have to tell everyone separately what’s going on with him all the time as long as a few strategic people know. Other times he hates it, because it makes it impossible to keep things on the downlow.

Nevertheless, for news to travel in his family, someone needs to know in the first place, usually.

It’s pretty likely that there’s already talk about him and Felina. Maybe they’ll be talking about how Al’s finally got a girlfriend, a sign of normal adult life or something. Ha! What a joke! Or maybe it goes more along the lines of “Al’s girlfriend is rude and fame-hungry and pretends to read the future”.

It’s funny because both of them are very wrong. (It’s not funny at all.)

That’s what Al thinks, staring at the not quite talking portraits he’s been making before the summer. He could try to start another one. Try to figure out how to make it work. He remembers that he likes that, figuring that kind of stuff out. He can even kind of feel the spark of it now, the excitement and the curiosity, but at the same time he can’t, because even if he does figure it out, even if he does find a solution—who the hell cares? What does it matter? That problem just isn’t relevant to anyone, therefore it’s solution is completely useless.

Yeah, useless. That’s kind of a theme, isn’t it?

* * *

Al spends three days thinking. He avoids that, usually, because it makes him feel bad. Thinking. Consciously thinking about things, anyway. That’s probably why he’s so shit at life. Because he never wants to think about anything.

He doesn’t do a whole lot else. He goes to work, and he makes sure the flat doesn’t collapse, but other than that, it’s staring into space and thinking. At some point, Al doesn’t even know what he’s thinking about anymore.

As it turns out, he can make his days pretty empty if he doesn’t try too hard at actually doing anything. He’s never known—he’s always kept so busy, working, reading, running errands for Fawley, housework, and painting whenever he could. Eating and sleeping. It’s strange how much of that he can just—not do. He hasn’t had a stressful life by any stretch of imagination, but he’s always been busy.

Now, he’s barely doing anything, and it doesn’t even matter. It all really is an illusion, apparently.

Al knows in the back of his mind that he should be doing things, helping Fawley out, putting in a new order of various art supplies with the local shop, answering at least a dozen different letters and possibly negotiating some new commission or whatever. Actually, he kind of has to, if he wants to justify his own employment, but Fawley’s going easy on him right now.

In all honesty, even if he does all those things, Al isn’t sure if he can justify his employment.

Really, he’s just a twenty-one-year-old failure of a wizard with barely compatible NEWT subjects and insomnia, lacking any work experience except for the half-time he does at a muggle bar. To top it off, he’s basically being babied by a sick ninety-six-year-old.

Well, that’s what you get for never thinking.

* * *

News travel fast within his family, and apparently, they travel even when Al doesn’t put them there in the first place.

Rose and Scorpius show up on the third Day of Thinking.

It’s the late afternoon. Not late enough for Al to worry about work yet, but early enough that if he were to make a fancier dinner, he’d have to start soon.

As if.

Al’s sitting on the bed in his room. He’s retreated there after being subjected to Fawley’s concerned glances for a few hours. He knows the old man only means well, but that doesn’t mean Al likes to be confronted with his pity all the time.

He hears them come into the flat, the familiar creaking of the floorboards he only knows so well because he lives there. Then—voices. They grab Al’s attention in a way the familiar sounds of the flat can’t, because they sound just as familiar—except in the wrong place.

There’s a knock on his bedroom door and it opens before Al can say anything. There they are, Rose and Scorpius. The sight of his friends here is more intrusive than a stranger’s could be.

Al doesn’t have to say anything to know that they _know._ He can see it in their eyes and their postures and their faces—he has to look away. He doesn’t want to see this. He already knows that they’ve always been right. He doesn’t need to hear the “We told you so”s. Even if he probably deserves them.

“Hi.”, he says anyway, because not saying anything isn’t really an option.

The two of them bounce down on the bed next to him, on both sides, almost in sync, which feels like a reminder of how closely they fit together, how much they match each other. Al wonders how they do that, except not really, because, c’mon, it’s Scorpius and Rose. If was one couple in the world that would work out together, it’s them. Al isn’t even mad about it. Just a little resentful, but only for a second.

“Hey”, Rose says, voice so full of compassion, Al hates it.

Al sighs. “Why’d you come here?”

He knows he sounds rude, but it’s still a legitimate question. Kind of. He knows they’re here, because they _know,_ but he doesn’t really know how they know.

“Fawley called Rose and told her about what happened.”, Scorpius says gently. His hand is on Al’s shoulder, even though they’re sitting close enough to be touching either way.

Al lets out a huff, more surprised than amused. “He—what?”

Rose pulls a black square out of her pocket. Right, Al’s phone. He’d almost forgotten he’d given it to her. It feels like forever ago. It’s hard to remember what he was thinking back then. She hasn’t had a chance to give it back yet. But regardless—

“He—called you? Honestly?”

“Yeah”, Rose says, “Al, are you—are you mad?”

Al shakes his head, quickly. “No, it’s just—it’s kind of funny, actually.”

Rose, quite obviously doesn’t see the humour in the situation.

Al doesn’t, either, not really. He just knows that apparently there’s nothing he has any control over anymore. Maybe that’s what’s funny. Sometimes people talk about him because of circumstances of his birth he has no control over, sometimes people leave because of that talk he also has no control over, and then he doesn’t even any control over when his friends and family talk about how he’s being left.

It’s bloody hilarious, isn’t it?

But he isn’t mad. He isn’t mad, because Fawley only means well, and he’s missed his friends—he’s missed them so much, more than he realised, and even though they feel all wrong in his bare bedroom, he doesn’t want them to leave.

“I’m not mad”, he says again, and it sounds more serious this time. Finite, somehow. He’s not mad. There’s no real sense in that, anyway.

He swallows. “What did—What exactly did Fawley say to you?”

He feels Rose shift nest to his thighs.

“Not much”, she says. She’s talking quietly, almost whispering but not quite, even though there’s no real need for that. “Just that she left and that you weren’t—good.”

Al doesn’t say anything for a second and she adds: “He was worried about you.”

It seems like that is the flipside of Fawley letting Al off easy. He also uses his cell phone to call Al’s friends to stage an intervention. Or whatever this is.

Not that Al—well, he does mind, but only because he doesn’t want this happening at all. He doesn’t want there to be any kind of need for this kind of thing.

“Well”, Al says, “I guess you probably heard through the grapevine, about her.”

Rose hesitates. “Mum said something”, she admits, “About you having a girlfriend and some things.”

Al’s not really sure if he wants to know how his father described Felina to Aunt Hermione. It’s unlikely to be a flattering description. That, even after everything, bothers him. A lot. But it’s just another thing he doesn’t really have any control over.

“Well”, Al says, “I did.”

He’s not talking quietly, not matching the almost-whisper his friends have going. There’s no reason for him to go along with that.

And then he tells them. Everything, in much more detail than he ever thought he would, even over the past weeks when he fantasised about introducing Felina to them. He thought those things, some of those things at the very least, would stay between him and Felina forever, just for the two of them to keep.

But they won’t.

He tells them about how they met, how Al first managed to make a decent painting, how they talked about magic for hours and hours and how they met again. How she seemed to like him for whatever inexplicable reason. How they kept coming back for each other.

And then he tells the other story. About her obsession with privacy and how she would never give her name to anyone and looked over her shoulder every minute of the day. How she lived a weird half-life among muggles and never talked to any other wizards. How she started fleeing from one place to the other. And why.

Maybe the extent of that only catches up with him as he’s telling the story. He’s always known, of course, he was there, but in the story he’s telling, he can actually see it.

He doesn’t say her name, doesn’t tell them what she’s really called, because that just wouldn’t be fair, but that is pretty much the only thing he leaves out.

He almost doesn’t tell them about how they got married, because it’s bloody embarrassing, and it sounds so damn stupid in hindsight, like he should have known.

Then again, does it even matter? He never even signed the stupid paper. He almost wishes he did. Then, there would at least be proof all of this really happened. But that’s probably even dumber than anything else he’s been thinking.

“She didn’t know”, Al says, when he gets to the very end of the story, “I didn’t even consider that. Nobody has ever just—not known.”

He still can’t believe that part, not really. It makes sense in his head, kind of—she’s been isolated from wizard society for most of her life and even then, she’s from another country, but still—it doesn’t make sense at all. _Everyone_ knows. Always.

There’s a beat of silence.

“Oh, Al!”, Rose says, and she sounds actually, properly, choked up.

It’s funny, because Al’s voice is scratchy, but he doesn’t feel like he wants to cry anymore. He feels—he doesn’t know how he feels.

But Rose is throwing her arms around him, which is almost a feat considering how awkwardly close they are sitting on his tiny bed already. He lets her.

“I’m so sorry this happened to you”, she says quietly.

“Yeah”, Al says, “Me too.”

But that’s not quite true. This is not something that happened to him. He was fully complicit in the act. He did this to himself. Nobody forced him, least of all Felina.

He doesn’t quite know how to vocalise that, though.

“She’s wrong”, Scorpius says, and he sounds almost as sad as Al feels, “It doesn’t—sure, people would have found out about her eventually, but you wouldn’t have to be very public about it and even then—it could protect her just as much as it would expose her. You could have protected her.”

Al snorts. He can’t protect anything, not even himself. “Do you not remember how my NEWT exam in defense went?”

“You passed!”, Scorpius argues, but they both know that was completely based on the theoretical part that Al had studied to death for fear of embarrassing himself by failing his NEWT in Defense of all subjects. Of course he had embarrassed himself, anyway.

“But I just mean—if people knew about her, of course they could find her, but it would also be really hard to take her away, you know? A lot harder than if she was just any witch living in London. A lot of people would notice if she suddenly went missing.”

Al hasn’t thought of that before. He considers it for a moment, then he shrugs. “People can always hurt you if they really want to, no matter who you are.”

He feels both of them flinch a little next to him. It’s sad, but it almost feels like a comfort that they can still share a mutual thought between them without having to spell it out, even if it is a silent terror that haunts them still.

“Yeah”, Scorpius says, voice small, “I guess.”

He pauses only for a moment.

“But that only proves my point, doesn’t it? She’ll never be completely safe from them either way, so…” The argument dies in his mouth before it is finished. It doesn’t change that he means it one hundred percent.

Al honestly hopes that Scorpius will never change.

He doesn’t say that.

“It doesn’t matter now”, he says instead, because even if Scorpius is right, that’s irrelevant now. “It just—is.”

“Yeah”, Rose says, “Well, that sucks.”

Al sighs.

She hugs him again and Al lets himself actually feel it this time.

The three of them have always been touchy friends, courtesy of growing up together in a boarding school where parents weren’t available to fulfill the need of human touch in a way that comes naturally from being family. But that hasn’t been as much a thing since they graduated, mostly because they just don’t spend as much time together anymore.

Al, in sudden burst of emotion, finds himself violently missing them, which is stupid, because they are right there, both of them, but he still does. He misses spending the better part of every stupid day together, he misses eating together and studying together and breathing the same air constantly. It’s stupid, because even back then, they weren’t exactly coined by the hip or anything, they didn’t even have their classes together, for the most part, since they were all in different houses. Nevertheless, they were more or less always aware of everything that was happening with each other without even having to try, because they were just there for it.

And now, having just told his friends a huge secret he’s kept for three years, Al finds himself missing that ease. That instant understanding. It’s not that it—or they, for that matter—are gone. They’re just further away.

And right now, Al hates that.

“I’m sorry that happened”, Rose says again, “It sucks that you have to deal with that, when you’ve always been so careful.”

Al isn’t sure what she means. And that, right there, is that distance.

“It’s almost ironic, isn’t it? You’ve always tried so hard to stay away from people who wanted to be with you because of your dad and then when you finally find someone, he is the reason she doesn’t want to be with you. That’s the worst luck ever.”

She’s still hugging him, so she can’t see his expression.

Maybe he’s grateful for that.

Al doesn’t argue with the statement, but something about it makes his stomach twist with discomfort. It’s not even Felina, or the fact that she broke up with him over his father. Sure, that’s hurtful and bloody embarrassing, but the feeling in his stomach is something else. It has something of an unpleasant revelation, like missing a step on the stairs or reaching for a familiar item in a drawer only to find that it isn’t there. Like something about the universe is slightly off-key. Or maybe it’s not the universe, maybe it’s just Al.

* * *

The rest of the week, Al feels terrible. That’s not good, obviously, but when Al is honest with himself (a rare occurrence, really, but occasionally he manages), it’s an improvement from the first few days after, when he just felt stunned and confused and so very much in his head.

He’s still in his head, and probably also still stunned and confused, but somehow less so. Maybe it’s just that the rest of the world, to Al, has started existing again, taking a bit of the space that has just been occupied with feeling utterly lost and stupid.

Of course, that also opens the door to a lot of other feelings. Hence the terrible.

He gets about a dozen owls from concerned family members checking in on him and makes himself answer all of them, if only for the fear that if he doesn’t, they might show up at the flat like Scorpius and Rose did.

While that helped, in a strange way, (them showing up, no the letters) he really doesn’t want anyone else to follow suit. With Rose and Scorpius, he can just about keep his own mortification in check. At least Fawley already sort of knows them. Al can’t imagine how he’d feel if he had to suddenly and unexpectedly introduce him to cousin Victoire, who sure, is perfectly nice, but—just, no.

It’s bad enough that Rose and Fawley know each other now—well enough that they can worry about Al together behind his back. It really is Al’s own fault for making Rose his stand-in to check on Fawley. Now they _know_ each other. He’s created a monster.

So he writes letter after letter, trying to convey the message that he’s fine, even though he’s been dumped by his girlfriend and it isn’t that big of a deal, nobody needs to go avenge him, and no, he doesn’t want to talk about it, while simultaneously sounding neither like a liar, nor a complete asshole. It’s really a walk on a tightrope.

Al can’t quite figure out how he feels about the letters. Writing them, of course, is excruciating in a way Fawley’s letters never are, but still. He didn’t expect so many people in his extended family to care about a simple break-up, especially when almost none of them have met the other party involved.

It’s kind of nice that they are all so sympathetic. Because they are. The letters—well, they are a reminder that Al’s various failures in life now also include being a romantic partner, but they are also really sympathetic. It’s hard to be mad about getting sympathy.

And Al isn’t, he’s just—well. He doesn’t know. It’s kind of weird. So sure, maybe they’re all concerned, but maybe they’re just terrible gossips. Maybe they talk behind his back about how this is his first girlfriend and now she’s dumped him before anyone’s even met her. Maybe they’ve been watching his behaviour all this time, talking about how awkward he is, how he doesn’t really flirt and kiss random girls at parties or whatever normal behaviour would consist of. Maybe they’re just tuning in for the obvious finale of the show, now. 

Al takes a deep breath.

Okay, so even he knows that’s not very realistic. His relatives are, for the most part, very lovely and nice people. Nothing about the letters really justifies such vile assumptions. As he said, they’re perfectly sympathetic. But that’s just it—they are so sympathetic! As if everyone, in a weird way, has just been waiting for it to happen.

Maybe it’s a little in what Rose said about how Al’s always been so careful not to be with someone who only wanted him for weird, undeserved second-hand fame. But Al isn’t sure he has been. Right, so he has never dated anybody who wanted him for his alleged fame, but that’s just because he’s never dated anybody.

Except for Felina, if that counts. Al isn’t sure if that was dating, exactly, considering she never even called herself his girlfriend until the night she broke up with him. Still, they had something, didn’t they?

Al shakes his head in frustration. He’s sure they did, he remembers thinking that they do, he remembers being sure, but at the same time, all of the proof seems so muddled. How, in hindsight, does he know, really? So much between them was unspoken and now it is almost too easy to dismiss it all as if it wasn’t there at all. Sure, they met up everyday for three summers, but that isn’t inherently romantic, is it? Friends can do that, too. Sure, they’ve kissed and—stuff, but when it comes down to it, that isn’t inherently romantic either, is it? Okay, so maybe friends don’t necessarily do that, but you don’t exactly need to be in love, either.

They’ve never said it. That’s what it comes down to, does it not? Can something be real, if you never acknowledged it verbally?

Yes, definitely, because Al knows that it happened, but at the same time—it’s like the records are clean, everything is only in his brain. Like a dream. Like a damn dream.

Maybe a nightmare.

No, not a nightmare, because that would be unfair, but at the same time—well, hell if Al knows. That’s the thing about dreams though, isn’t it? Some are beautiful, some are horrifying, but most of them are just disjointed and unreal and leave you wondering once you wake up.

So yeah, Al’s never dated anyone except Felina, maybe, but that wasn’t because he was careful. He just never—he just never wanted to. So he didn’t. He doesn’t really think any of them know that, which sounds stupid, but something about how they all talk, all the sympathy and the “You have been so careful” makes him think that they, well, they assume that was some kind of deliberate thing in his part. It wasn’t.

He wonders if maybe it should have been. Maybe he should have been—different. Maybe he should be different.

Thinking about that makes him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than the embarrassment that he has failed in a big way and everybody knows. More uncomfortable than the fact that he hasn’t done anything of note in his entire adult life.

Al has had enough unpleasant revelations for this week. Much like the metaphorical leopard, Al isn’t going to change his spots completely. He’s not going to think about this.

* * *

Al doesn’t work with Cath for the next couple of days.

That happens sometimes, especially when Al has the rare morning or afternoon shift. Cath does a couple fewer hours than he does, and, unbelievably, they do have other colleagues, even if their schedule line up more often than not. Al isn’t even sure why that is. Maybe Monica just thinks they work well together.

When they come in to work Saturday night, Al already feels a little better than the last time they saw each other.

Sure, Al still feels lost and embarrassed, but at least he doesn’t feel like a shell anymore that doesn’t have space for anything but mindless duty and processing. As he said, maybe it’s not an improvement as far as quality of life goes, but at least he feels like a person, now.

Cath is feeling energetic today, Al can tell by the way she comes in the door. It’s the kind of energetic that can only come from a combination of near-endless amounts of stress and way too much coffee. Not that Al is judging.

“Hi!”, she says, too loudly, slamming her bag down next to Al.

“Hi.”, Al says back, notably more subdued.

“Alright?”, she asks.

“Yeah”, Al says. He’s not sure if it’s true, but he doesn’t feel like psychoanalysing himself, even if Cath probably wouldn’t mind. She’s nice like that. Or nosy, whatever sounds better.

“How about you?”

Cath makes a familiar grimace as they step out behind the bar. It’s Saturday, so it’s busy.

“You know how it is. Thesis is killing me already, but what can you do?” She shrugs.

Right, a thesis. Al knows that that’s the kind of thing you write when you’re close to finishing university, in your final year maybe. So Cath is finishing university soon. Huh.

It shouldn’t be so surprising, she’s a little older than him and she has been in university the entire time he’s known her, but it still feels strange.

He’s still thinking about it when they catch a bit of a break at three o’clock. That’s when it always thins out a little, even on a Saturday.

“So you’re going to be done soon, then?”, Al asks as he wipes the counter.

Cath looks around, confused for a second until she connects to their earlier conversation.

“Yeah, unless I mess up. One more year and I’ll be free!” She sounds genuinely happy about it.

“Do you not like it?”, Al asks, surprised.

Cath gives him a look and shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, sure. But I’m doing it so I, like, have it, you know? My degree? So of course I want to be done.”

“Of course”, Al repeats, though he doesn’t really understand that at all. He’s not about to question someone else’s approach to their life, though, he’s busy enough doing that with his own. Besides, in terms of having one’s life together, Cath is miles ahead of Al.

“Anyway”, Cath says, “Hopefully this will be the last year—the last year of essays and thesis statements and stupid lectures and professors that like to throw dice to determine your grades—last year of working at this place, too, I guess.”

 _Oh. Right. That is a thing._ Al kind of knew, of course, but he hadn’t realised, really. Of course Cath is going to do something else once she’s finished with university. She’ll get a proper job in—crap, he doesn’t even know what it is precisely that she’s studying—and then she will be busy with that. And obviously, that’s also where she’ll get her money from. No reason to work crazy night hours as a bartender anymore. Everything really _is_ changing, all the time.

“Well”, Al says, “There’s still some time left before you get to ditch me.” It doesn’t sound heavy, and Al is grateful for that.

She simply shrugs. “Too true.”

There’s a small silence, but it feels natural, not loaded at all.

“It’s been quite some time, hasn’t it?”

Al shrugs. To him it all kind of blends together. Somehow it still feels like he just graduated from Hogwarts yesterday, but at the same time that feels really far away. He doesn’t really know.

“You must be done with undergrad soon, too, right? One more year, two?”

So this is a bit awkward. Al chuckles a little trying to figure out how exactly he’s getting out of this one. Technically, he’s never even said that he was a student at university, but there have been enough opportunities for him to correct her assumption that it still seems like a lie. Kind of a big one, too.

“Wait”, Cath says, her expression changing, “That’s not—I mean, you’re not doing badly, right? That’s not why you’ve been so—you know—”

Al furrows his brows. “What do you mean?”

“You, know, fidgety. It’s a lot better today, but last week, well—you used to be a lot like that all the time, your hands shaking, and tapping on stuff, but it got a lot better for like, at least a year, except the other day—”

“Oh.”, Al says. He was kind of aware before of his strange fidgeting/shaking thing, but he didn’t think it was that prominent. Maybe Cath is just really observant.

“Anyway”, Cath says, “You’re not freaking out because of university, right? Because that can really suck…”

“No”, Al says, slightly embarrassed.

And suddenly, he just wants to tell her. It’s not like it really matters, it isn’t one of those secrets that should really be kept at all costs, it’s not like he’ll get in trouble for telling her this. There’s no actual reason not to, except that he likes being secretive sometimes for reason that even he himself doesn’t really understand.

So, well. To hell with it.

“I’m not—I don’t actually go to university.”

See. That wasn’t that hard.

Cath turns to properly face him, confused.

“You mean you dropped out?” She doesn’t sound judgemental, just surprised.

Al shakes his head. “No, I never attended.” It comes out surprisingly smoothly.

“I—really?” She looks terribly confused. Al almost feels sorry for her. It’s not exactly her fault that he is like this.

“I’m sorry”, he says, “It’s just—I think you kind of assumed it at some point and then I felt too awkward to say anything about it?”

She’s still blinking at him. “Oh my god. I’ve been to your house. I’ve wished you well on your exams and you don’t even—Jesus!”

“I’m sorry?”, Al says again, “I mean, I wasn’t really trying to lie, I just—I don’t share stuff with people easily.”

Cath snorts. “That must be the understatement of the year.”

She’s right, but Al chooses to not comment on that.

“Wait”, she says, “what else do you do, then?”

Al shrugs. “I mean I work here.”

And other than that he doesn’t do a whole lot, but he doesn’t want to tell her that. It feels bad enough saying that to his magic friends and relatives, but Cath is different. She so obviously works her butt off all the damn time, it just seems bad to admit something like that to her. Not that Rose or Scorpius or Lily don’t work really hard—it’s just different.

“And I help out Faw—Alistair. I do his mail and chores and groceries and stuff, and he lets me live there in return. And I can use his art supplies.”

He laughs a little, but it sounds uncomfortable even to him. Another person that knows he is a loser. It doesn’t have as much sting to it as it does sometimes in the privacy of his own head, but the feeling of being so exposed still gets to him.

“And that’s it?”, Cath asks.

_Ouch._

“More or less?”, Al says. “I know, it’s not very… …impressive or anything.”

“No, no!”, Cath says quickly, “That’s not—I mean, Carol would be so disappointed!”

Al stares. “Uh, what?”

“Oh, you remember Carol? She used to work here until like, a year ago? She always thought you were super mysterious and must have some dark double-life as a secret agent or an alien or something.”

This time, Al has to actually, genuinely laugh, even though he chokes on it a little. He completely forgot about Carol. But at the same time, it’s a little ironic—he might not be an alien spy, but he _is_ a wizard. But if she could see how he goes about his daily life, he figures she would still be disappointed. Even as a wizard, Al manages to be a quite boring person.

“Well, as it turns out, I’m just a bit of a loser who lets people assume he goes to university so he doesn’t sound as lazy and boring.”

It’s meant to be a joke and it should land, the tone of voice is just right, but it doesn’t.

“You know that doesn’t make you a loser, though, right?”, Cath says, deadly serious, “Not going to university?”

Her gaze is so intense that Al has to look away.

“No, I mean, of course not.” He doesn’t think that. Of course not. Except for Lily and Cath, nobody he knows goes to university and barely any wizards do, either way. Al thinks that maybe, if it were a more normal thing for wizards to do, he would have liked to go, but the way things are, it never seemed to really be on the table. “I just mean, because I’m not really doing anything, you know, going anywhere.”

He isn’t. He makes stupid decisions that will lead to him being alone and without any achievements or experiences. He’ll be old, without anything to show for it. Essentially, he’s still where he was when he left Hogwarts. That’s why he’s a loser.

“Well, you’re taking care of Alistair, aren’t you?”

Al shrugs. “Sometimes it feels more like he’s taking care of me.”

He’s never said that out loud. He’s not even sure if he’s even let himself think it, properly, but now that it’s out, it feels true. Like something he’s known for a very long time.

Cath shrugs. “I don’t know you guys that well”, she says, “but either way, I’m sure he’s glad that you’re there.” There’s something in her voice and when she says the next sentence, it almost breaks a little. “You probably help him more than you think—a lot of old people—He’s not alone as long as you’re there.”

“Yeah”, Al say, “I guess.”

He’s not convinced that’s very important.

She seems to suddenly remember something. “Is he doing alright, though?”

She sounds strangely urgent, almost too invested for someone who has met the man all of three times.

“Yeah”, Al says, which isn’t really accurate, because Fawley does have a termi—a really bad illness, “I mean, there haven’t been any changes.”

“Oh, good”, Cath says, “I just thought because the last time—and you weren’t doing well—”

“No”, Al says, “That was a different thing.”

He could just tell her. She probably wouldn’t be weird about it, not in the way everyone else is being. People have break-ups all the time. It’s a normal thing to be upset over.

She doesn’t have all the strange context that everyone else is inferring. Or maybe she does, because Al isn’t even sure what exactly that context is. What everyone else thinks when they look at him. What makes them say the things they say. But he isn’t thinking about that.

So maybe she does know, because it’s bloody obvious, whatever it is.

The thing is, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that Felina was really a thing at all, or in what spectacular fashion that ended. And she’ll never find out unless Al tells her. It’s not like there’s anyone that could gossip about it to her.

And Al, well, he’s had enough of people knowing. Or maybe he’s just had enough of feeling stupid talking about it.

And if he doesn’t, well, nothing will happen. Cath will just talk to him like she always does.

And even if he’s just told her a secret and the world didn’t implode, this is different. He doesn’t want to keep himself a mystery or everyone away from his business, he just—he just wants some space away. To breathe.

So he doesn’t.

“Okay”, Cath says, because he doesn’t elaborate. She gives him a look that’s not judgmental, but still seems to be examining him in some kind of way. “You will be fine, though, right?”

“Yeah”, Al says, and doesn’t even consider the answer properly before he’s already given it.

* * *

Al isn’t thinking about it.

Really, that just means he spends his time thinking about other things.

He doesn’t like it.

The thing about pushing thoughts away, though, is that when you do it for a really long time, at some point, something happens that breaks your brain to the point that you can’t think about anything else.

Or maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with breaking your brain. Maybe it’s more about breaking your life. Or the illusion of your life. Or whatever.

Bottom line, it bites you in the ass when you least expect it. Because you never expect anything, because you aren’t thinking.

“How do you manage to just—think about everything?”, Al asks Scorpius.

He’s visiting his friend on his lunch break, because between dealing with the thoughts in his head and Scorpius mildly uncomfortable obvious concern, the thoughts have won out as the bigger evil. He doesn’t want to think anymore. He thought that company might help. Apparently, it doesn’t, not really.

“What do you mean?”, Scorpius says, eyes scrunching together, as if he’s considering making a detailed data sheet analysing all of Al’s strange questions. Al doesn’t know what the point of that would be, but Scorpius would definitely be capable.

To be fair to his friend, it’s not like the question would make any sense to anyone living outside Al’s brain. It’s rhetorical question anyway, considering Al absolutely knows the answer. The reason Scorpius can deal with thinking about everything so head-on is that he’s brave. That’s the whole secret.

Maybe that’s the thing that divides them, really. Scorpius is brave, and Al isn’t. Scorpius faces his feelings and the evils of the world or whatever with action and determination and Al—doesn’t. Al tries not to think about it and paints another picture that ends up magically minimised in whatever storage closet he and Fawley can find a little bit of space left in.

Scorpius rewrites the entire plan for magical transportation in the UK because he didn’t like how it was handled before. Al, in his situation, might have drawn a stylized version of a map of the tube stations or something. Overall, not very useful. Or brave.

“I don’t know”, Al says, even though he does know, he just doesn’t know how to explain. Or maybe he doesn’t want to. Because it’s so damn embarrassing, even though he knows they all have known for years. They’ve seen it all happen, all this time.

Al really just wishes Scorpius would say something about it already. Or Rose, maybe. They’re the ones who’ve gotten the whole story, everyone else has to be satisfied with some degree of abridged.

Not because Al is lying, it’s just—it’s exhausting, okay. It’s damn exhausting talking about it all the time as if there are no other topics in the world. Al isn’t quite sure how much of that information they’ve shared with everyone else, but it doesn’t actually matter. Either way, they’re the ones that have the full scoop right from him, which also makes them the people entitled to say it.

Rose could mention it basically every day, since they go on their daily runs together again, but she doesn’t. Scorpius could be mentioning it right now. But he doesn’t.

Why aren’t they just saying it? That way, Al could at least get mad about it.

“Mate”, he says, out of the blue. Scorpius is still looking at him with the spreadsheet-look. “You can just say it. Rip off the plaster and stuff.”

The spreadsheet-look increases. Or maybe Scorpius looks just concerned now, and a little confused.

“Al, honestly, what are you saying? You’re not making any sense today.”

Al sighs. He logically knows that that’s of course right, it’s not like Scorpius can read his thoughts, but still. He must be thinking it, too, right?

“You know, you should just say it. That you told me so.”

“I told you—what exactly?”

“That I’m crazy and this never could have worked out. That I’m stupid for even trying.”

The words come out a lot clearer and harder than Al ever imagined Scorpius or Rose saying them, because they’re nicer than that. But the message, well, it isn’t exactly off. Al means what he means.

Scorpius winces. “I’ve never said that. Or anything like that.”

He pauses for a moment, but not long enough that Al can properly argue. “Listen, I’ve never told you that you shouldn’t get married to a girl hunted by the mafia in order to help her because she’ll dump you once you’re in England. In what conversation would that even have come up?”

Al bites on his lip at the description, but he knows it’s accurate, kind of. He also thinks it might be a jab at the fact that he hasn’t told Scorpius—well, anything about all of that. Not until after.

“But you would have”, he says. “If you’d known.”

Now Scorpius just looks exasperated. “What does that even mean?”

“If I wrote you an owl going ‘Dear Scorpius, my girlfriend is being chased by the mafia. I am going to marry her so she can get out of the country, unless you tell me not to. Love, Al’ you definitely would have told me not to make a crazy, impulsive decision like that.”

Al knows that for a fact. It’s not exactly something he can prove, but still.

Even so, Scorpius looks almost offended. “I would marry Rose in order to get her out of the country if she was being chased by the mafia.”

Okay, fair enough. Al doesn’t have a doubt that that’s true. Still, though. “That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s Rose.”

“Yeah”, Scorpius says, “Because she’s my girlfriend.”

“She also wouldn’t dump you afterwards.”

Scorpius is silent for a moment. Then—“I think I would still do it even if I knew she’d dump me.”

“That’s still different.”

“How so?”

Al doesn’t actually know how so, but it definitely is. “Because it’s Rose. And it’s you.”

Maybe because in their case, this scenario is entirely hypothetical. No, even so, it’s just—it’s Scorpius and Rose.

“You’re not making any sense”, Scorpius says.

Al chooses to ignore that, mostly because he knows it’s true.

“Okay, so maybe you’d do it for Rose, but still, if I had asked you for advice on this beforehand would you really have told me to go through with it? Without any second thoughts whatsoever? Be honest. You don’t really think it was a sound, rational decision.”

Scorpius throws up his arms in frustration. “Merlin, Al! I don’t know! Maybe I don’t think it’s the most measured decision you can make, but who knows what I would have told you. It was a complicated situation. You didn’t do it to be stupid, you just wanted to help. That’s not exactly a bad thing!”

This deflates Al a little. “Well, yeah. Still. It was stupid. I didn’t think it through at all.”

Scorpius shrugs. “Yeah, maybe.”

“So that means you can say it now.”

“Say what?”

“That you told me so.”

Scorpius stares at him with an expression of utter confusion. “I literally just told you I didn’t!”

“But—you know. It’s just my whole thing.”

“What is? Seriously, Al—”

“Doing things like this.”

“Like _what_?”

“Like, not how you’re supposed to do it. Not—you know, just in the weird way.”

Scorpius stays silent.

“I do everything the weird way. Or, like, not at all. I just—I just—you know what I mean. I always do the crazy thing. Everyone expects me to do the thing, but then I do something completely different that makes no sense. And everyone says it’s stupid, but I do it anyway.”

Scorpius isn’t even eating anymore between looking confused. He just stares at Al very intently. “So you mean”, he says slowly, “You do things because other people say you shouldn’t?”

“No”, Al says, frustrated with how slow Scorpius is being. It’s such an obvious thing. It’s everywhere in his damn life. “I just mean I make bad decisions all the time and everyone else can see it.”

“Can you give me an example?”

Al takes a deep breath. Is Scorpius really going to make him say it? Apparently so, because he’s still looking at him with a mix of confusion and exasperation.

Al doesn’t even know what to say to that.

Except he does, because the examples have been lining up in his brain for days now.

“I—Remember when I was choosing my NEWT subjects? I had good grades, I could have gone for some sensible combination, but I did Astronomy and Ancient Runes and Muggle Studies—they don’t complement each other at all, so they’re effectively useless. Everyone told me that, but I did it anyway.”

Scorpius looks like he wants to say something to that, raises his hand in a gesture almost like you would in school, but Al’s just getting started.

“And then we graduated, and everyone was like: ’So Al, what are you going to do with your life now, don’t you want to find a nice little entry job or some place to get more experience so you can, you know, have a proper career?’ But I just wandered around London in the middle of the night for weeks and weeks on end until my parents got really worried, so I got a job at a muggle bar. Which, you know, fine, for a few months, or maybe a year, until I figure out what I want to do for real. But you know what I do? I stalk a ninety-year-old semi-famous artist until he lets me live with him. And then, three years later, I still live with that old guy and I still work at that muggle bar, but I also manage to marry a foreign girl that none of my friends and family have ever met. It kind of fits the bill, doesn’t it? I never know what I’m doing! So really, you can get it over with and say that you told me so.”

Al stops, then, almost a little out of breath. There’s a small pause between them and Al puts his water bottle to his mouth to drink.

When he puts it back, down, Scorpius seems to have gathered his thoughts.

The first thing he says is—“No.”

A tiny pause.

“First of all—when we were picking NEWT subjects, what everyone really was saying was that you should do Transfiguration, because you’re incredible at that and if you remember, you did that and you got an O. And you also did Charms and Defense, which makes six NEWT subjects and only really smart people do that, because it’s a lot. And you are.”

Scorpius is right, of course, but that doesn’t mean Al is wrong. It mostly means that he’s really missing the point, because sure, all of that happened, but it doesn’t exactly have anything to do with the situation. Plus, Al sucked at Defense.

“As for all the other stuff—when have I ever told you any of it was a bad idea?”

Al’s eyes dart around the room. He—he isn’t actually sure. But Scorpius must have, at some point. “It was implied.”, Al says eventually.

Scorpius closes his eyes, slowly, then opens them again. “Well, not by me.”

He really does look annoyed, which, in Scorpius, is rare, but it only lasts for a moment anyway. Then he gives Al another look, a strange look, that isn’t quite as easily decoded.

“You know, you can still do those things, right? You can still get a job or start some sort of training somewhere. You can even get some more NEWTS if you really want to.”

“Yeah, I know”, Al says, suddenly feeling very tired, because he does know. He’s thought about it, kind of, except not really, because doing that kind of thing requires something that he didn’t have when he was first supposed to do it, and he still doesn’t have it now: some kind of vision. A plan. Motivation. Al doesn’t know where he’s supposed to start, because he doesn’t know where he wants to go. Honestly, he can’t really see himself going anywhere. The future is just—it’s a big grey blur. It always has been. And Al has always just kind of ignored that.

His mind is still down that rabbit hole when Scorpius raises his voice again.

“I always thought—“, he says and breaks off, but Al looks back from the table up at him.

“I always thought”, Scorpius starts again, “that you just did what you wanted to. You know, what you really liked, even if it wasn’t—very secure, or prestigious or what people expected.”

He sounds almost a little lost, like Al has taken something away from him. Which doesn’t make any sense.

But is he wrong?

Al doesn’t even know. Everything is so complicated, and in hindsight, contrary to its reputation, it just gets more confusing.

“I don’t know why I do things”, Al says and in his ears, it sounds like the most honest thing he’s ever said, “I never know what I’m doing at all, I just—I never even think about anything, if I can help it, I just do stuff and try to block out everything else.”

At this, Scorpius just shrugs, in that way that seems almost performative and betrays anything but indifference. “But you are doing things. You’re not a lazy person or anything. So even if you think you don’t know where those things come from, that doesn’t mean that they come from nowhere.”

Al has no clue what that means, He understands the words, of course, in theory, but it doesn’t feel like anything he can draw any conclusions from.

“So?”, he says, weakly.

Scorpius shrugs again. “I don’t know. I’m just saying I don’t think every decision you’ve made in your life is necessarily a mistake.” He pauses for a second, clearly thinking. “I mean, unless you think they were a mistake, in which case, well—everything can be fixed.”

Al knows he means it. Scorpius should be made the god of fixing hopeless situations or something, because he always believes it will work. Or maybe that means he should be made the high priest of it?

Not that Al thinks the situation is hopeless, necessarily. Al doesn’t have a clue what he thinks.

“I don’t have a clue what I think.”, he says, out loud.

Scorpius reaches over to touch Al’s shoulder. It’s meant to be a comfort and it even works a little.

“What’s brought all of this on?”, he asks, a little softer, “Are you not happy anymore?”

The question hits Al like another curveball. He’s not even sure why, it’s just—it doesn’t seem like it applies to him. Has he ever been happy? He’s not been unhappy, necessarily, except for when he’s been, when he was a mess and hated himself a little and couldn’t take care of himself at all. And then he learned, and it was better.

But happy, somehow, feels like a big word. Too big for Al.

It’s not even that Al thinks he hasn’t been happy before, because he knows he has, it’s just that happiness, to him, doesn’t seem like something that’s supposed to be permanent. It’s supposed to be little snippets in a sea of okay. Sometimes there are more of them and sometimes there are less, and overall, that’s alright. They always come around again.

But Al doesn’t know how to convey that to Scorpius, who—who just isn’t like Al at all, in some ways.

“Are you?”, he asks instead.

Scorpius blinks. “Yeah”, he says eyes darting around the room, “yeah, of course.”

They’re sitting in Scorpius’ office, his colleague is out, doing field work, or maybe she’s just on holiday, so they have their privacy.

“You’ll stay, here, won’t you?”, Al asks, because his last question wasn’t really one. He knew that already, could tell from the way Scorpius has been, even when he visited him last week. It’s different.

Scorpius looks down in his lap, before he meets Al’s eyes again. “If I can.” He looks a little wistful. “I want to, anyway. They always send me for the kids, the really small ones that don’t even go to Hogwarts yet. It’s the best.”

Al grins. “Bet you’re glad I made you take Muggle Studies with me.”

Scorpius’ new job, as Al has found out by now, consists of covering up public displays of magic by children, usually muggleborns who don’t have any control over their magic and don’t even really know what it is yet.

Scorpius loves it.

It makes sense that he would, to Al at least. It’s so very much in the vein of what Scorpius would love, he can’t believe nobody has thought of it before.

“Yeah, yeah”, Scorpius says, “You always know best, sure.”

Al grins, then his face softens out. “I’m happy for you, you know. I’m sorry that I’m raining on your parade with all my” He cringes as he says it, but there isn’t a better word for it. “drama.”

“No”, Scorpius says firmly, face and voice serious again, “Stop it. Your feelings matter, too.”

Al doesn’t know what to say to that. “Thank you.”

They sit in silence for a moment, and the noises from the hallway, from the rest of the ministry are suddenly seem louder than before. Scorpius’ break will be over soon, it actually might be already. Al knows that his friend is somewhat flexible about it, but still.

“I should get going”, Al says, and he can see that Scorpius isn’t too happy with that. Scorpius wants to talk this out, wants a neat conclusion to everything Al’s been saying. Al isn’t very sure there is one to come to.

“Thanks”, Al says again, “Thank you for” _putting up with me_ , he wants to say, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to push more self-deprecating stuff on Scorpius. “listening.”

Scorpius smiles, a strange mixture of unsure and reassuring. “Anytime.”

“Yeah”, Al agrees, “You too”, overcome by a familiar little wave of guilt. He isn’t good at being a friend in the way Scorpius is, most of the time, but he does try.

They say their good-byes, and Al makes his way back home.

There, he stares at a canvas for a few hours and can’t bring himself to start anything, because if all of this has been the wrong decision, what’s the point?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for reading, and I'm excited to hear what you think!


	18. trying so hard to get it all right (but only feel lonely at the end of the night)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al tries very hard, and it doesn't seem to help much. Somehow, things still get better, though, even if he doesn't always notice right away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've given up on having any sort of upload schedule, and I'll just upload whenever I have anything ready, which might be a lot slower than I used to, but I only have so much time and I'm only getting busier, sadly. However, this is still definitely being continued and I appreciate all and any sort of comments and thoughts! I hope you enjoy this chapter, it's quite long and I tried hard to make it good.

One morning, Al gets out of bed and Fawley isn’t there.

Al doesn’t notice at first, because he’s busy cleaning himself up, taking a shower, switching on his brain to figure out what he needs to do today, but when he goes to turn on the stove for their first meal of the day (He has officially given up on figuring out if it should be called breakfast or lunch) he notices that the kettle hasn’t been put on yet.

That’s strange.

Sure, Fawley isn’t exactly an early riser either, but unlike Al, he actually sleeps at night, not in the mornings. And when he gets up, he gets some tea.

Al steps back into the art room, but Fawley isn’t there.

Maybe he’s gone out early and didn’t want to wake Al. But even then he would have had tea, right?

Al walks through the flat one more time, even though the idea that he would have somehow missed Fawley is laughable, considering there aren’t acres of space in there, anyway.

He comes to a still in the hall. Fawley’s shoes are sitting right there on the floor, like they always do. Fawley hasn’t left—if he’s not here, someone must have carried him out.

Al pushes down the heavy prickle of anxiety in his chest. He can’t panic. That won’t help. He walks back in the art room, eyes gliding over the mess of canvasses and paint brushes.

His eyes wander to Fawley’s bedroom door. Al doesn’t really go in there. It’s his bedroom, there isn’t ever really a need to. Conversely, he can count the number of times Fawley’s been to Al’s room on one hand.

Cath has a couple of shifts between New Years and Christmas. It’s weird, because usually she takes time off around them—to visit family, celebrate Christmas, and study for exams, or so Al always assumed. But this year, she seems to be taking more hours than usual, anyway, almost as many as Al.

It not like Al minds, in any way, shape or form, because honestly, of all the people he ever works with, Cath is definitely his favourite. Which is to say, she’s the only one he actually talks to. Not literally of course, there’s small talk with Jared and Meredith and Hope and he kinda knows some vague general facts about their lives, but for the most part, he’s content just working alongside them quietly, saying not much more than hello and good-bye.

Cath is different. He’s always happy to talk to her, even when she’s being nosy. He’s not really sure how or when that happened.

Al doesn’t think he’s quite adopted her nosiness yet, but still, today she seems—well, he doesn’t like it.

“Are you alright?”

“Hm?”, Cath says, or rather, makes the sound, her mind clearly still elsewhere.

She’s making some kind of cocktail. Her hands are moving fast and efficient, and her make-up is on point and there is nothing that would out her as unprofessional or unfocused, it’s just—well.

“Sorry”, she says after a second, “I was just—thinking. Did you need something?”

Al chooses not to repeat the question. “You know, if you need some quiet space again, to study or whatever, you could come over anytime, right?”

Something flickers over Cath’s face, to quick for Al to discern properly.

“Thank you.”, she says and Al thinks something in her voice sounds a little raw, but he isn’t sure.

He looks at her for a second, waiting for a proper answer, but she doesn’t give one. And then there are new customers, and more drinks to make, and ingredients to restock and glasses to clean and the moment is over and the quiver in her voice gone.

And maybe Al’s only imagined it anyway. He doesn’t know her that well, after all. Certainly not well enough to push.

-

“It just—doesn’t—work!”, Lucy exclaims, slamming her wand against the desk with every word.

Al flinches at the sound and puts it out of her hand. “Don’t do that. It’s not safe.”

Lucy rolls her eyes, but doesn’t resist.

“Try again”, Al says, trying to sound encouraging.

Lucy sighs. “Show me again.”

“ _Animalifor.”,_ Al whispers, pointing at the cup in front of him. It promptly turns into a mouse and Al has to hurry to undo the transformation before it can get away.

“That’s the movement, right?”, Lucy says, mimicking Al’s form with her own wand. It is indeed the correct movement.

“Yeah.”

“ _Animalifor!”,_ Lucy says.

The cup grows ears and feet and a tail, but it’s still a cup.

 _“Finite incantatem!”_ , Al interjects, before it can use those legs to run away. That really is the problem with animal transformations isn’t it? Inanimate objects generally don’t move without some other force acting on them. Animals do. And they usually don’t like the idea of staying right where they are.

“Why doesn’t it work?”, Lucy whines.

“You can do it”, says a quiet voice from the other side of the room.

It almost startles Al. Carolina’s barely said a word since he arrived at Lucy’s house to help her study, and the way she sinks into the couch, face hid behind the book, she’s almost invisible.

He doesn’t linger on the distraction, though, he has a mystery to solve. _Why doesn’t it work?_

The wand movement is correct, the pronunciation, too. Those are funnily enough the most common mistakes in transfiguration, even at this level. But it’s not the problem here—

“You’re weighing out your body weight and wand power against the levels of concentration needed, right?, Al asks, “This spell has a low enough level of viciousness, we can discount that.”

“I know”, Lucy says, “That’s what McGonagall always says! But I checked about a million times, it should work! I bet you don’t calculate that any time you transform something.” The annoyance in her voice is palpable.

She’s right. Al doesn’t. He just—well, he just kind of knows, usually.

“You get a feeling for it.”, he says.

“Well, _I_ don’t.”, Lucy mutters and Al isn’t entirely sure if he’s supposed to have heard that.

He hums in response, still thinking.

“Well”, he says, “What are you thinking when you do it?”

Lucy blinks. “What do you mean?”

“What’s going on in your head?”, Al says, silently making a decision. He’s not sure if what he’s about to tell her even makes any sense, only part of it is in the books, it’s just how Al understands it, really—

“I’m thinking about the spell, I guess?”

“What about it?”, Al asks, almost feeling nervous about the answer.

“Just how I need to do it, I guess? You know, the movement, the words? That I hope it works?”

“Works how?”

Lucy is looking at him now like he’s asked what a wand was. “That it transforms into a bloody mouse, obviously.”

“What kind of mouse?”, Al asks.

“What kind of mouse… What kinds of mice even are there?”

Al shrugs. “Different breeds, I suppose? I just mean—What does the mouse look like?”

Lucy thinks about this for a moment. “What’s the mouse supposed to look like?”

“Doesn’t really matter”, Al says, “It’s your mouse.”

“So why are you asking me then?”

“I just mean” Al hesitates. “This isn’t really sound science, but do you know what it looks like? Can you maybe try to imagine it as clearly as you can while you do the spell?”

Lucy looks at him sceptically. “And that works?”

“I’m not sure, but that’s what I do.”

Lucy tries another time.

There’s a loud poof and then—the mouse is strangely large, suddenly occupying the entire table, and Al has to hurry to untransfigure it again.

Lucy rests her head against the table, and lets out a noise somewhere in between a groan and a scream.

“Hey”, Al hurries to say, “That was a lot better!”

“Was it?” Lucy looks back up at him.

“You over-rotated your wrist at the end, but if you fix that, it should work.”

“Are you sure?”

There’s no real way to be sure of something like that. Transfiguration has too many factors and not all of them are even known. Still though—“Pretty sure. Let’s try again.”

By the time Al’s watch begins to make noise in his pocket, Lucy’s managed the spell a couple of times.

Al grimaces. “I’m sorry, I should get going. I need to go to work, and I need to stop by at home before—”

“Yeah”, Lucy says, “Of course, don’t worry about it. I’ve made so much progress today, you don’t even know how long I’ve been stuck.”

Al shrugs. “It’s not that hard, once you get into it.”

There’s a pause.

“Anyway, if you need help again—”

“We’re going back to Hogwarts tomorrow”, Lucy says, “But—”

“We’ll figure something out, yeah?”, Al says, “With the other stuff, too, alright, if you need anything?”

It’s really important to him. He isn’t quite sure why, but he feels so very involved in this, it’s almost a little too much.

“Yeah”, Lucy says, “Thank you—”

Al turns his face away, as if that will stop his blush. “Of course. I’ll write you, alright?”

“Sure”, Lucy says.

Al’s already out the door, when she calls back.

“Al?”

“Yeah?”, he turns back.

He’s not quite fast enough to see her run up to him, and he’s blindsided by her bear hug.

“Good luck, yeah?”, she whispers.

There isn’t any clear thing she’s referring to, but Al gets it all the same.

He nods.

He lets go, and he leaves.

* * *

The thing is, overall, Al isn’t very good with feelings.

Not other people’s, honestly, those are mostly fine, in the sense that he knows what to do with them, for the most part. He even gets them, a lot of the time.

For example, he gets Rose’ feelings, most of the time. Those are easy, for the most part, and it used to be even easier, back before she disappeared into another time in sixth year. Now, there are sometimes flashes of things that Al doesn’t understand, that he cannot understand, because they’re of war and cruelty and other things that Al has never seen but she has. Still, it’s easy, because Rose’ feelings, for the most part, make sense. And, perhaps even more pointedly, they’re always right there in her face, for everyone to read, no matter what Scorpius always says. Al knows that this is true.

Scorpius’ feelings, speaking of him, also aren’t all that hard. Maybe not quite as easy as Rose’, but still. For one, they’re just generally quite loud. Rose’ are too, but not in the same way. Al honestly doesn’t think that Scorpius has ever had a quiet feeling once in his life. Scorpius’ feelings, once there, fill up all of the space around him, and, perhaps more importantly, it fills up all of him.

It’s why he’s like that. It’s why he’s so amazing.

Al, most definitively, is not like that.

His feelings, unlike Rose or Scorpius are hidden things, monsters that lurk in the dark somewhere. He isn’t actually sure where, or if feelings have a location at all. Maybe he’ll paint that at some point.

The Hole Where My Feelings Are Lurking by Albus Severus Potter. An amazing display of modern art, in the sense that it would be just a huge, plain black canvas.

He can already see a pretentious headline for that, where some kind of acclaimed critic pretends they get what he meant by that.

Ha. As if.

Not that Al’s ever put any of his paintings into an exhibit. Usually, Fawley is the only person who sees them before they are shrunk and safely stored somewhere around the flat, probably until forever, or until Al has the immediate urge to look at how much his older stuff used to suck.

Also, Al’s pretty sure that in all of Wizarding Britain, there’s perhaps one magical art critic and that one’s unlikely to bother with him anyway, and even more unlikely to be given a spot in a somewhat well-known newspaper, so that fantasy doesn’t really hold up.

In any case, those are the feelings that Al is really bad with. His own.

He just—doesn’t really see them at all. Doesn’t feel them, if that’s more appropriate.

Well, it’s not that he doesn’t feel them, because of course he does, they’re his feelings, but usually he just. Kind of doesn’t notice? Not until they hit him in the face, or, more often, until they’re gone and he quietly realises, that, whoah, this past month was pretty shit, wasn’t it?

It’s not that he notices nothing about his own emotional state, either, he knows when he’s in a bad mood, or in a slightly better mood, or when he finds something funny, or when he’s hungry or tired. But those aren’t really feelings, those are just—symptoms. Little hints that are supposed to tell him what’s really going on under the surface, how everything connects and what the big picture is.

Al doesn’t have a bloody clue about the big picture and he’s really not all that good at putting it together. It doesn’t seem like an intuitive thing to him, and trying—really trying to figure out why he acts the way he acts and how he is doing, _really—_ it just enables that spiral of guilt that chases him away from all thoughts about that.

He doesn’t really want to examine it. And he also doesn’t really trust himself to, because he’ll think he’s fine, mostly, and then realise two years later that he’s been avoiding most people he loves for absolutely no reason except some unknown feelings he still can’t quite identify.

There’s also that even those tiny hints he gets, moods and reactions and things that come to him so fast they can’t be corrupted by thought or reluctance, so they must be real—well, they don’t make any sense.

Like when the heard about Uncle Ron’s death, all the way back in fifth year, Al knew that he was supposed to be sad. Angry, maybe, or scared, or perhaps even confused. In any case, he wasn’t supposed to giggle without any control, because that’s not what giggling is for.

Or when Felina left, he just kind of—went to work. He’s not sure if ‘going to work’ expresses an emotion other than ‘I need money to live’, but if it does, it’s certainly not the appropriate one either.

Al isn’t sure if it’s his feelings that are weird or just the way they come (or don’t come) out, and he doesn’t like to think about it, but either way, he doesn’t trust it.

What he does instead, as a crutch of sort, is to examine the way other people react to him, searches for little clues in their interactions as to what they think he might be feeling like. It’s convoluted, and not exactly a perfect system, but it still works surprisingly well.

It’s in the way Rose had known he had been happy at Christmas before Al had even realised and how Cath sometimes comments that he’s in a weird mood today and only then Al realises, that yeah, actually, he is.

It’s not always something he does consciously, but it is how, in the following days, he figures that he’s kind of doing alright.

These days, in all honestly, mostly pass in a blur of blandness, comfortable in their banality. comfortable in their banality.

Fawley is doing a little better again, or maybe Al’s just imagining that, it’s hard to tell. In any case, it’s not worse.

Rose has decided that it’s too cold out to jog in January, which may or may not be true, but in either case Al knows that she’s really just saying it because she’s getting too damn busy at St. Mungo’s and just can’t muster the energy up for it anymore. He doesn’t call her out on it, though, because he knows she feels guilty about it anyway, or she would just say the real reason. Instead, he just goes alone.

There’s no real reason to do that, either, except that by now, he’s kind of used to it and it would feel weird to just not do it.

Either way, despite St. Mungo’s or the cold or whatever other reasons there are, Rose letting up on the jogging feels like a sign. A sign that Al is Doing Better. Al feels that that warrants capitals.

Maybe it doesn’t mean that at all. Al isn’t sure if he feels that different, but well—case in point. He’s notoriously bad at judging his own feelings, so it seems safer to trust other people’s assumptions, especially when they know him as well as Rose does.

None of his problems have been solved, per se, but at the same time, he isn’t making himself as crazy about them anymore. They just kind of are. And it’s not fine, but it just is.

He still tries to see either Rose or Scorpius or, at best both of them at least a couple of times a week. They try, too. Al thinks that as long it’s like that, he can probably deal with—well, maybe not everything, but a lot of things. The monsters in his head, for sure, even if they are weird murky feeling he can’t categorise.

Lily goes back to America again, and presumably, James goes with her. Maybe he doesn’t, but then again, it’s not like Al ever really knows what James is doing. In that sense, it’s kind of unfair that it’s Al who people worry about. He’s in London, easy to reach and sort of reliable. Just because he doesn’t have the kind of job that screams success. And throws himself into a crisis every couple of months. And generally makes illogical life decisions.

Al doesn’t usually think like this, comparing other people’s shortcomings to his own, because he doesn’t really like pointing their flaws like that, even in his own head. But sometimes his patience runs a bit thin. And it would be a lot easier if his brother just left him alone. Also, it’s not actually that often that he comes out on top in those kinds of comparisons. Well, kind of, anyway.

And James is kind of leaving him alone, what with probably being in another continent right now. But still.

Al doesn’t bring it up to Lily when she calls to tell him that she got back home fine. He cringes a little at how easily she calls it home, there, but he doesn’t say anything about that, either. It isn’t his to tough and it wouldn’t be fair. Besides, calling another continent is kind of a lot more expensive than just calling someone around London, as Al has figured out by now, and he doesn’t really have the money to start a fight. Nor does he want to, anyway.

Life goes on again.

If Al has learned anything by now, it’s that that’s how it always goes. Stuff happens, then life goes on, and stuff happens again. He’s never really sure where it is in between all that that everything changes so much.

He constructs his life one week at a time, always around the next little moment of happiness. Going to another gallery with Fawley, game night with Rose and Scorpius when he can get it, or otherwise just dropping in on Scorpius’ break, a letter from Lucy, a phone call from Lily every once in a while, having dinner with his parents on Sundays. His routines take care of everything else, and really, in the grand scheme of things, he’s alright with that life.

Maybe not overjoyed or deliriously happy or whatever else he’s supposed to aim for, but that’s alright. It’s alright.

* * *

It’s early evening and Al’s just stepping out of the grocery store, hands full of bags. He usually goes to the closest one, for the simple reason that that way he doesn’t have to awkwardly carry stuff for too long. It really is a miracle that in three years, he hasn’t managed to figure out what kind of bag to bring to make it less awkward.

By early evening, Al means it’s already dark out, but not really late, not even for people with a mostly normal sleep cycle. Then again, it does get dark early this time of the year, so that probably isn’t too well of an indicator.

So that’s what Al’s dealing with at the moment—too many, too thin, too full plastic bags he probably shouldn’t be using, a London sidewalk and the presumably judging eyes of the public (not that anyone’s really looking at him, probably), when suddenly his phone starts ringing.

He almost jumps and most definitely drops two of his bags down onto the sidewalk. Scrambling, he just lets them sit there, and fumbles for the phone instead, pressing at the tiny green button as fast as he can. It’s not like it matters if his yogurt is spilled all over the street if Fawley is—

Al misses the button twice, because he hasn’t gotten his phone out of the pocket of his jacket properly yet and also a little bit because his heart is beating out of his chest and something bad has happened—

“Hello?”, he says, when he’s finally managed to operate the damn thing correctly.

For a moment, there is just silence on the other end—or not silence, rather, noise, but as it’s the airy sort of phone noises you stop noticing once someone’s actually speaking.

Then—

“Al—” The voice is scratchy, and there is a stifled sound, wet and weird, and this isn’t Fawley’s voice at all, this isn’t Fawley, but who else would? Who else even knows this number? Really, it’s only Fawley, and Lily, but this isn’t Lily either, and—

“Cath?”, he asks.

“Yeah”, the voice says on the other side, still sounding weird and scratchy and upset and not like how Cath sounds usually at all and Al knows by now that everyone sounds a little different over the phone, but this is not that, this sounds—

“Listen”, she says, and something, somewhere seems to unravel, and her next words come rapid, “I’m so sorry I’m calling you, I didn’t know who else I could call, I—” Her words break of in another weird wet sound and now Al realises that it’s a sob.

She’s crying, Cath is crying.

“Did something happen?”, Al asks, “Do you need help?”

“Yeah, I” Her voice goes strangely high, “I—Sorry, I don’t—Sally—”

Al waits for her to say more, but she just keeps sobbing.

“Did something happen to her?”, Al asks, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible. “Is she hurt?”

Cath sobs harder.

Al doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.

“No”, she cries, “No—she—I’m so stupid, Al, I’m so fucking stupid, and now I don’t—”

Al presses the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can keep listening while he picks his groceries back up. He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, but he has to do something, and whatever that is will work better when his groceries aren’t all over the sidewalk.

“You’re not stupid”, he says, because he might not know what’s going on, but he knows for sure. “Listen, can you tell me where you are? I’ll come and I can help you sort this out.”

Whatever it is.

“Yeah”, she says, seemingly having calmed down a little, “I’m outside, I—”

“Is there somewhere close by you can wait for me?”

“Uh, if I walk a bit—there’s a Starbucks—” She tells him the street.

“Okay”, Al says, “Stay there, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Yeah”, she says again, suddenly very quiet, “Thank you—I—”

She doesn’t say anything else.

“Of course”, Al says, before he hangs up.

He puts the phone down and takes a deep breath. He looks down at his groceries.

Okay, one thing after the other.

He pulls his wand into the sleeve of his jacket and puts a spell on himself that makes muggles ignore him, before pulling it out properly and magically transporting his bags onto the kitchen table at the flat. He really hopes he hasn’t just accidentally broken one of Fawley’s ancient teacups, but if so, they’ll have to live with that.

The upside of both walking everywhere you go and also just walking a lot in general is that Al knows his way around in London pretty well. Especially the parts of London he’s sort of consistently in, close to the flat, the _Nightowl,_ or his parents’ house. He knows the street Cath’s mentions and he knows how to get there, too, but walking will take too long, she’d have to wait forever. And Al doesn’t have a good feeling about the whole thing. She probably shouldn’t be alone, or she wouldn’t have called.

Al still isn’t quite sure why she called him, of all people, considering he’s a certified mess of a person as Cath very well knows, and surely there must be people better equipped to handle this situation, but she has, so… Al will do his best.

In this case, his best means he’s going to summon his broom and fly.

It’s mildly crazy, considering he’s still in the middle of the city, even with disguise charms, but Al decides that he doesn’t care. If he flies high enough, it’s too dark to see him anyway.

He touches down in a side alley and shrinks his broom small enough it can go in the back pocket of his jeans. That’s probably not ideal, as far as carrying a broom goes, but whatever. He has other things to worry about.

He steps back onto the slightly bigger road and has to look around for a moment to reorient himself. His eyes glide over the windows and the people until he finds a green sign. Right, Starbucks. He starts towards it.

It’s actually quite busy inside, which isn’t that unusual, considering it’s not really that late, but it still throws Al a little off guard as he stumbles inside. He ignores the line and simply looks around the tables until he kinds Cath.

He almost doesn’t recognise her at first, not because she doesn’t look like herself, she definitely does. It’s just—well, she’s right in the corner, crawled in herself as much as she can sitting in a booth like that, arms hugging her body, posture small. Her hair is slightly messy, not terribly so, but enough to be weird for Cath, who’s usually so neat and put-together.

It breaks Al’s heart a little. But more than that, it makes him scared.

He slows his steps when he approaches her.

“Cath?”, he says carefully, as if he’s afraid she might not be the right person. He isn’t, that’s stupid, but somehow it feels appropriate.

She looks up.

Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her face is spotty.

“Hi”, she says, and she isn’t crying anymore as she must have been before, but her voice still sounds shaky and wrong.

Al sits down next to her, carefully watching her reactions. “Hey.”

He fumbles with a napkin he’s picked up on his way in and hands it to her. He isn’t sure if that helps any, but it feels better than nothing.

She wipes her face with it. “Thank you.”

“No problem”, Al says.

There’s silence for a moment. As much silence as there can be in a semi-busy Starbucks, anyway.

“Can you—can you tell me what happened?”

Cath snivels into her napkin once, then sits up a little straighter.

“I came home earlier today”, she says quietly, her voice still shaking a little, “and I—well, I found out that Sally, well apparently I haven’t been around enough for her to—” Her voice breaks, but she immediately starts again, this time more resolutely. “She’s been cheating on me.”

* * *

So there’s the other thing about Al’s feelings: Sure, he’s bad at identifying them, but that’s only half the story. The other half is the part where he, well, handles them.

He doesn’t—strictly speaking, he doesn’t have all that much experience with that. Because sure, the monsters in the deep end up eating all the happiness-fish and make waves all the way into his fingers so they shake without him noticing sometimes, but they’re still down there in the deeps. And Al isn’t. Or maybe he is, because he _is_ the deep, but as long as Al can, he’ll keep swimming on the surface.

The surface is what he knows, what he can deal with. There’s painting, and school, and work, and reading books, and cooking and being busy and other people, usually.

There’s time to get to the monsters, basically. It’s not like they’ll run away all of the sudden if he just ignores them. Not that Al hasn’t tried that.

Al isn’t used to having emotions fast, and all at once. Scorpius is the one who does that. Scorpius is the one who goes to punch Lucy’s first boyfriend when he breaks up with her in the less gentlemanly manner. Al is the one who gets a something in his stomach and proceeds to stop Scorpius from doing too much damage, because that’s not how things are solved and when Scorpius calms down, he’ll agree with that, too, because really, he’s against violence.

Al’s always thought that if it were just him, finding out that kind of news about someone he cares about, he’d take a minute, or two, feel something, then perhaps dare to make a rude comment in a hallway a month later, but only after assessing for a million years how much would be too much.

As it turns out, Al is wrong about that.

Al crosses the room in a few strides, raises his hand and knocks.

Nothing _._

The anxiety spikes up again, stronger now. Al knocks again.

Nothing, again.

Al stares at his hand for a second, then the door handle.

“Alistair?”, Al says, then repeats it, louder: “Alistair?”

Still no answer.

Al positively rattles the door for a second, and he must be shouting now, before he decides that his fear overrides his sense of privacy.

Luckily, the door isn’t locked and springs open easily.

The room is simple, if not quite as simple as Al’s, having been Fawley’s bedroom for years and years, but compared to the rest of the flat, which is positively stuffed, there isn’t that much in it, safe for the necessities, like a bed and a wardrobe.

It’s obvious that Fawley is lying on the bed from the rise of the body underneath the blanket.

“Alistair?”, Al says again, a little quieter now, but maybe that’s just because his heart is beating so loudly, he almost can’t hear his voice over it.

Fawley doesn’t move. He doesn’t make a sound, either.

Al stumbles closer to the bed, touches his shoulder. He feels hot to touch, even through the blanket.

 _No,_ Al thinks, _no._

He tries to shake the old man a little, and this time he does react, a little bit, makes some kind of strange sound.

It doesn’t do anything to reassure Al.

“Alistair”, he says again, and his voice almost isn’t shaking, “This is Al. Are you—can you wake up?”

Fawley makes another noise, and Al can’t tell if it’s pained or just tired and confused.

Then—“Al—bus.”

It sounds like a tremendous effort.

“Yeah”, Al says, trying to sound as gentle and comforting as he possibly can. “I’m here. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. I’ll take you to St. Mungo’s.”

He has to, he knows, this is serious, but as he says it, he realises that he doesn’t quite know how. He could call for help, probably, but that would take forever. Al doesn’t even have an owl, and if he did, that would be less than ideal still, too slow for a situation like this. Who knows for how long Fawley has already been lying there like that?

Al postpones his guilt for later. He can’t be working around that right now.

He takes a breath and steadies himself. He’ll have to apparate. It’s not—well, it’s not exactly ideal, but—He just hopes he won’t splinter Fawley.

Al props himself up on the bed next to Fawley and starts peeling the blanket off of him. But Fawley clings to it like a lifeline. Whatever. Its not like that really matters at this point. Al wraps him up with it as well as he can and puts his arms around the old man tightly.

Then he concentrates, very hard, and directs his will to St. Mungo’s.

* * *

Al keels over the second they arrive in the lobby. He can’t do anything about it, and he actually hates himself for it a little right that second, but not as much as his stomach hates him, because it promptly empties itself right there on the floor.

It’s even worse than the last time at Rose’ and Scorpius’ flat, maybe because he hasn’t actually gotten around to eating anything today.

But, really, that is the furthest thing from Al’s mind. He’s to busy holding Fawley upright—or at least a semblance of that—while also trying not to be sick right on him.

Al so desperately hopes he hasn’t splintered them. He knows his body parts are all still there, but—well, there is no blood, for one.

He’s still checking when there suddenly is a wand in front of him, and then a face—

“Sir”, somebody says right in his ear, voice calm and assertive, “Sir, can you tell me what happened?”

Al needs to fight off another wave of nausea before he can answer.

“Magical Exhaustion Syndrome”, he croaks, “I don’t know how long he’s been like this—”

Fawley’s small body in his arms suddenly grows very light, and Al panics for a split second, before he realises it’s just a levitation charm.

He has to gag again, and when he comes back up, Fawley’s already secured on one of those mobile hospital beds.

“I don’t know—I just woke up and he was lying like this in bed, it must have been a few hours— His name is Alistair Fawley, you must have his records, right?”

“We will take good care of him”, someone says, but it’s one of those things they say to anyone that brings anyone to the hospital—

Then, there’s another bed in front of him, and someone leads Al to sit on it—Al’s too confused for a second, but—

“Oh”, Al says, his voice simultaneously too loud and too quiet for the noisy hospital lobby. “I’m fine, it’s just apparition sickness, I don’t need anything—"

Al gets checked through, anyway. They give him some water, and some strengthening potion, because apparently his blood sugar is low. It’s not really a surprise, because he hasn’t eaten, so if they really wanted to, they could just give him a snack, which is what Al tells them, but the healers aren’t really listening. Apparently, there’s a _protocol_.

He gets the extremely helpful diagnosis of apparition sickness and the very astute advice that he “probably shouldn’t apparate unless there was an emergency”.

At this point, Al kind of wants to strange someone. Through the combined power of his upbringing and the horror at the thought of people reading articles about his ‘extreme rudeness’ whenever Witch Weekly can’t make up any juicier gossip, he manages to stay mostly polite.

When he finally gets to see Fawley, he’s already being—

“You’re discharging him?”, Al asks.

He can’t be bothered to even try and mask his bewilderment. “Why?”

The healer gives him a sympathetic look.

“You did good on bringing him in here so early, so we could prevent a full attack.”

 _That wasn’t a full attack?,_ Al thinks, but he doesn’t voice it. He knows full attacks—well, he’s only ever seen two of them, really, and one of it was Scorpius’ and his work a little different anyway, so… But still!

“That’s… …good?”, Al says. He doesn’t mean to make it come out as a question so much, but it does.

“Yes”, the healer says, “It is.” He looks over to Fawley’s bed, where the man is busy filling in some kind of form.

“So you’ll just let him go, then?”, Al asks, still incredulous.

Something in the healer’s face soften before he says it, but it doesn’t help with the blow of the actual words. “There’s nothing more we can do for him.”

“Right”, Al says. It isn’t news, not really, but—

He presses his eyes together so no tears will come out. He can’t start that right now. It doesn’t help.

“How long?” His voice is choked, but it doesn’t break.

The healer shakes his head. “It’s impossible to say. Two years, three perhaps? It could be longer, but it isn’t really predictable.”

“Okay”, Al says, trying not to—what? Maybe just trying not to. “Is there—good food helps, right? I mean with the right nutrients and stuff and good sleep and air and being comfortable—”

He sounds like a mess. He’s aware. “I know it can’t heal, I just mean—it helps, right?”

He wishes the healer would stop smiling. “Caring is always good. Better than anything we can do.”

Al still takes the potions they give him for Fawley to take. He knows they won’t heal, either, because there is no cure.

“Thank you”, Fawley tells him as they walk through the front exit of the building.

“No problem”, Al murmurs. He opens his mouth to say something else, to express the mess of feelings in his brain, but—He closes it again.

“C’mon”, Fawley says in the same voice he always uses to nag Al. “Let’s go paint.”

They do. For Al, it’s the first time in weeks, but this time, he can’t worry about it being useless and going nowhere, because as he sits there, brush in hand, it feels like the only thing he can do, now and maybe ever. The only thing that helps, even though it doesn’t.

* * *

Not that Al doesn’t try on other ways, too.

He tries his best to make healthy food and makes sure Fawley drinks a lot of water as well as his potions.

He asks Rose about those, right the next day. Their daily run has been moved to whenever Rose has any time in her schedule in the afternoon or evening, because that’s when Al’s awake. Her hours are so irregular now, they basically have to make a plan at the start of each month to pull it off. It’s a bit insane in Al’s opinion, but Rose insists. And she doesn’t have a problem with planning everything in advance. It’s actually one of her most developed skills.

“The first one is for strength”, she says, “just overall more energy, they give it to patients during recovery, mostly, it’s quite common, because it gives the body more power to heal—Scorpius has that one for bad days, actually. The other one is against pain—not very specific, so it can be used for lots of things, but it’s a little heavy so they don’t use it that often, usually just as a temporary thing or for—” She pauses. “Wait, why do you want to know that?”

“Went to St. Mungo’s with Fawley yesterday. He had—well, they said we prevented a proper episode, but—in any case, they’ve given him those to take for—well, he’ll be taking them now, anyway.”

“Oh.”, Rose says.

Al waits for her to say something else, but she doesn’t.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

They’ve come to a stop a while ago. Rose looks down, then back up.

“Well, it’s not—it’s a quite common progression”, she says, which doesn’t comfort Al at all, because when people get sick, a common progression is also to—well, yeah. “It’s not—“, she starts again, but the sentence doesn’t quite come out that way. “You still have some time.”

That’s what the other healer said, too, and unlike Rose, he’s actually fully trained and works with MES all the time and with Fawley specifically. Still, hearing Rose say it feels different. More inevitable, maybe.

* * *

Al tries to paint it, over the course of the next week. MES. Magical Exhaustion Syndrome. The thing that’s always weighing Scorpius down, in one way or the other, has latched onto his legs and keeps him from trying certain spells, too afraid they’ll suck his magic dry. The thing that has, unfairly, befallen Fawley, the only person Al knows that can really, truly, capture a person in paint and canvas forever.

(He knows portraits by other people, of course, even magical ones. Fawley isn’t the first to do it, he isn’t even the only one right now, but—it’s not the same. Al has seen it and he can say that it isn’t.)

Sometimes, late at night, it selfishly seems like the sickness has been created to loom over all of Al’s relationships, the people he cherishes so much he feels like he might actually die over it. It’s a terrible, terrible feeling to have, unfair and inaccurate and selfish, because this is not about him, not about him at all, but he can’t help feeling like it is.

Like this is his punishment for—something.

For the way he is.

Maybe even for the people he’s chosen.

As much as Al doesn’t read the newspapers, not even the ones he probably should, because they hold actual, real information about important things going on in the world, the way people talk and write about him or his family doesn’t quite escape him completely.

If he just acted like he was supposed to, maybe things wouldn’t be like this. He would be the Scorpius in the story—not the sick one, maybe, but that’s not Scorpius’ role, anyway. If he acted like he was supposed to, he would be the one out there changing the world. He’s young, he’s healthy, he’s strong, he’s smart, he’s talented (even though that seems like a conceited thought, he knows he was a promising student), he’s _privileged_ , so incredibly privileged. He should be able to. And then he wouldn’t even know Fawley and—

And that’s where the line of thought ends and the guilt sets in. The other guilt. More guilt. That before already has been guilt.

If Al were like this, he wouldn’t even know Fawley. Maybe he’d be aware of his work, admire it distantly, but not waste too much of a thought on it. He couldn’t. He’d be too busy being who he’s supposed to be, forging the wizarding world into what it’s supposed to be, too.

Except he’d never be able to do that, because he doesn’t have the slightest clue to what that actually would be like, the perfect world. He doesn’t trust himself to make any kind of judgement on that. He’s smart, and healthy, and good at magic, but he doesn’t trust himself to know what’s best for the general wizarding public. He barely trusts himself to know what’s best for himself. Actually, right now, he doesn’t trust himself with that at all.

He just doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to be the kind of person that is useful and inspiring and world changing. He doesn’t. And to be honest, quite deep down in his chest, he doesn’t want to be that person, anyway.

It sounds way too stressful and overwhelming and—and public, actually. Al doesn’t want that at all. And that’s selfish in itself, isn’t it? Because if he wanted that, if he knew how to be like that, he could do so much good. He wouldn’t have to struggle to justify himself to the world, because his value would be evident.

But he can’t, and he does, and it isn’t, and now Al’s made it even worse by making all of this about him, when it so definitely is not.

It’s not enough that he hasn’t been thinking about Fawley’s health those past couple of weeks at all, beyond what’s already become second-nature ages ago, making sure he drinks water and eats right and sleeps and that both their phones are charged whenever either of them goes out, just in case Fawley needs Al, no, now that he’s been brutally reminded of it, he treats that reminder as if it was a retribution to his own carelessness.

Because it feels like one.

But it isn’t, because this isn’t about him.

This isn’t about him, and still he can’t help thinking and feeling like it is.

And, perhaps even worse than that, he also can’t help thinking the other kinds of selfish thoughts he’s been having, the ones that tell him that he’s made all the wrong decisions all along and that this is what he gets for choosing this kind of life.

He doesn’t want to think that, because it feels wrong, and maybe too true all at the same time, but he does anyway, but how can he, _actually,_ think about that when Fawley so clearly needs him?

And then it occurs to him that Fawley probably doesn’t need him at all, or if he does, certainly not half as much as Al needs him, because even when he’s convinced that every choice that’s lead him to this place has been wrong and in terrible judgement, the thought alone that he would have to be—that he will have to—that Fawley will, soon—

It’s too much.

It’s a fight he fights alone in the art room at night, when Fawley’s already gone to bed, and even London outside almost sounds quiet, when nobody hears him except his canvas.

He could never say any of those things out loud. He’s not brave enough to admit that kind of truth of feelings to anyone, he barely manages to admit it to himself. But even beyond that, he knows it would be a betrayal.

Because sure, those thoughts scare him and upset him and make him feel guilty. But he can’t even imagine his shame if Fawley or Scorpius or even Rose were ever to hear them.

* * *

So Al keeps it inside. He doesn’t really, because he starts painting again. Not stupid oil crayon portraits he kind of hated anyway. He starts painting again, maniacally in a way he hasn’t since he was an eighteen-year-old insomniac living in his parents’ house, without any clue or perspective about the future.

He idly remembers thinking just a couple of days ago with Cath at the bar that everything around him was changing so much so rapidly. Maybe he was wrong about that.

Because looking at himself now, he doesn’t feel like that at all. He feels like he’s just the same, only with a whole lot of added dread and failure.

And painting it all, really, is still the only thing he seems to be able to do.

* * *

Of course, Al doesn’t only paint, though he does that a lot. He also does what he’s always done: letters, laundry, groceries, work.

Basically, he’s doing the same things he’s always done, except with more anxiety.

Or maybe there always was anxiety. No, it’s definitely more now.

He keeps a closer eye on Fawley, of course, and how tired or moody he seems. He’s not sure if he’s actually seeing anything or just making himself crazy, so overall it might not be that helpful.

Actually, maybe it’s precisely that they’re still doing all the same things what’s making him crazy. Obviously, whatever they’ve been doing until now hasn’t worked, otherwise things would be better, so continuing to them so isn’t going to make anything better either. Al thinks he’s read some kind of smart quote about something like this, but he can’t remember the wording. Typical.

Of course, all of that doesn’t make any sense either, because Fawley being sick doesn’t really have anything o do with Al’s life choices, but he’s graciously ignoring that.

Nothing makes sense anyway. He might as well just find his own excuses for stuff.

So Al decides that he has to change something, even if it can’t be his entire life. (Because that wouldn’t be smart or possible or fair.)

“We should go out”, he tells Fawley one day.

It’s almost late afternoon, but not quite. It’s early enough for the day not to be mostly over, even for people who have a reasonable sleep schedule, but also late enough for Al to have been awake for several hours. Late enough for the spinning in his brain to become hard to endure, especially when it’s not the nighttime where he can let himself be carried away with it.

Fawley, sat behind one of the big easels, blinks over at him.

Al doesn’t even know what exactly it is that the guy’s working on. They certainly don’t have any unfinished commissions right now. But he also knows by now that Fawley painting isn’t so much a matter of getting money for it. Sure, he kind of needs make money to afford food and a home and more paint, but Al’s pretty sure that Fawley would paint either way. This way, he just doesn’t have to do anything else to make money. 

Al wonders how many people are like that about their jobs.

His mind wanders to his dad, briefly. In a way, he was catching evil wizards long before it was his job, but Al isn’t really sure if that counts. After all, he didn’t have much of a choice there, either, considering the evil wizard in question was pretty much out to get him. Put like that, it’s kind of a miracle he actually still wanted to do it afterwards.

Well, maybe that’s the reason it _should_ count. And some people say you always have a choice. Al isn’t so sure about that.

Then he remembers what Felina said that night when they visited his parents. It all seems hazy to him now, overshadowed by other memories and stronger emotions, but it’s still there—something about being sad and tired and afraid of change. He hasn’t thought about it since then, hasn’t thought to think about it, really, but it’s an odd image, not how he sees his dad at all. Then again, didn’t Felina say that part wasn’t actually real divination, just guesses? So that means it probably isn’t true, anyway.

Not that any of it has to be true, necessarily, he reminds himself. Because divination is inaccurate and who knows if Felina can even really tell the future. It’s not like he owes her to believe her. Anymore.

He tries the thought on for size but finds that it doesn’t fit. Sometimes, he thinks that he should be mad at her. Think badly of her. Think that she’s the worst person in the world.

But he doesn’t. He’s mad, kind of, but not violently angry.

Something tells him that violently angry would be the more appropriate emotion. That he should be wishing her the worst, or something. Isn’t that what people feel in this kind of situation? Sometimes, when she comes up in conversation (which, honestly, Al tries to avoid as much as possible) it seems like people assume he feels like that.

He doesn’t. Feeling like that seems like it would be a lot of work, take a lot of energy and Al—doesn’t really have that. He literally doesn’t have it in him. Maybe it’s lame and the opposite of normal, but when he thinks about her now, he mostly just hopes that she’s okay. The world is still a scary place and she has lots of nameless, faceless enemies, and not really any allies.

At least none that Al knows of, which doesn’t have to mean anything, because, well, he can’t really assume that he knows a lot about her.

He still doesn’t think there are a lot of them, allies, and surely not in England. So really, he just hopes there will be some help she can actually accept, at some point. And he doesn’t like to think about it anymore than that, because he fears that if he does, he might just discover another reason why he’s a terrible person, and he doesn’t really need one more of those in his brain.

“Where?”, Fawley asks.

Al blinks and needs a moment to remember what he said. Somehow, in the span it’s taken Fawley for the response, his brain has done a round tour of half of his anxieties. No, not half. He has more than that. That little excursion was an eighth, at the most.

What he hasn’t thought about, actually, is where he and Fawley are supposed to go, so the next thing Al says might actually be the stupidest possible answer to the question.

“Sightseeing.”

Fawley raises his eyebrows. “I think we both know London pretty well.”

They do.

Al has lived here for all of his life, except for when he was at Hogwarts (which, even now, is still a pretty significant fraction of Al’s life). He doesn’t actually know how long Fawley’s lived here, but it’s very likely to be a lot longer than Al’s been alive. They clearly both know there way around.

“Well, yeah”, Al says, because disagreeing isn’t really an option, “But isn’t that just more of a reason to properly look for once? See the beauty in what has become normal to us?”

He’s almost certain that if someone told him that, he would be the opposite of convinced—what he’s just spouted sounds like utter garbage in his own ears, but Fawley just shrugs and gets up from him chair.

“Sure, let’s do it.”

And they do it.

It doesn’t turn out to be a big trip. Since Al hasn’t planned a single thing about it, they just end up walking around the more common sights like Tower Bridge and admiring the Tower of London from the outside, reading facts of tourist signs until they get too cold and decide to call it a day.

It’s not grand, but they have a great time making overeager tourist guide impressions for each other and laughing at tourists and stressed people that actually seem like they have stuff to get done alike.

Al isn’t sure if it helps Fawley any, but it makes Al feel a little better, so. That’s something.

Maybe.

* * *

Like that, the year moves on quietly into fall and winter, without too much of a change. There’s anxiety, and there’s self-doubt, and there’s overthinking late at night, but eventually, Al gets used to that, too.

In a way, it seems like he can get used to most anything.

He tries to go to places more often with Fawley, now, though. The first time was rough and unplanned, but thinking back on it, Al likes the idea of it—something for the both of them that isn’t just routine.

So, in a strange reminiscence of the summer after Al left Hogwarts, he makes it his mission to go to see every art gallery in London he can find, except this time, it’s together.

In a way, of course, these trips, even if irregular and always a little different, become routine, too, but in face of Al’s other crippling guilts and doubts, that almost feels alright. He doesn’t really expect to escape any of those unpleasant feelings anymore, anyway.

Nevertheless, he keeps waiting for Fawley to ask for an explanation for Al’s sudden desire to go on these outings, because Fawley always wants to know everything, especially about how a person ticks. He likes people watching and is uncannily good at it, and Al knows that for Fawley, he’s a subject like everyone else.

So maybe that just means Fawley’s already figured him out. Al doesn’t think that’s improbable, but he still kind of wishes he had that kind of clarity for himself. Again, it seems to him like he’s doing something without any rhyme or reason to it, just because he—he wants to say because he feels like it, but that doesn’t seem quite right. Maybe something like intuition serves as a better descriptor. Al’s pretty sure though that intuition is reserved for important decisions, not visits to art galleries, so that’s probably not right either. In any case, it just feels like any reason he assigns to his actions is just tacked on, put there afterwards as a logical explanation that can be swapped around just as soon as a better one comes along or it doesn’t fit the narrative anymore.

The real reason Al does things—it’s lost at sea. Or something. That would be a pretentious name for a painting. Reason lost at sea.

But Fawley doesn’t ask, and Al doesn’t want to bring it up, feels like it would be weird, so long after they’ve started, so they just make their way through art gallery after art gallery.

And it’s—it’s nice.

It’s not world changing, or anything, because at the end of the day, Fawley is still ill, and Al is still, well, a mess, and the world is still like it was before, but nonetheless, it’s a good experience.

It’s nice in a way Al’s never thought doing this could be nice with someone. In Al’s mind, going to a gallery has always been something to be done alone. The thought of sharing it with someone almost felt absurd.

It’s not like he thought that his family, or Rose and Scorpius, or whoever would hate it. Al isn’t even afraid of that. It’s just—maybe they would just find it okay. Maybe they just wouldn’t care a lot. That seems like a very real possibility, and not one Al thinks he could stand to see. 

The thing is, he sort of understands it, at least in his head. Not everyone gets art. Or at least, not everyone gets every kind of art, not everyone the same. There’s plenty of art that Al doesn’t get. Plenty of pictures, famous ones even, when he looks at them, he doesn’t really feel much of anything. He doesn’t get the story, he doesn’t relate to the emotion. That’s fine though, because other times, he does. And sometimes, he does so much that it chokes him up and he almost can’t breathe and he has to look away. And then he looks again and he can’t stop for a long time.

He doesn’t know if his parents or Rose or Scorpius ever feel like that. If they could share it. They might, because it’s not like you need to be an artist to truly appreciate art, but if they don’t—well, Al prefers living in the ambiguous state of not knowing than to have it confirmed.

With Fawley, it’s different. Even if they don’t always see things the same way or share the same tastes, Al knows, that deep down, Fawley gets it. Maybe he gets it more than Al does.

And so, Al gets to keep that alive within himself.

And it isn’t quite so lonely. Not at the gallery, but not at the flat, either, because there is something they know they understand about each other.

So that’s nice.

* * *

With time, the fuss about Felina within his family starts to slow down a bit as everyone comes to the conclusion that Al is, essentially, fine.

Well, mostly anyway.

Al isn’t sure if his current state really counts as fine so much, but he isn’t about to start a debate. As loving and kind his family are, most of the time, their concern is just too much for him. He’d much rather sort out his problems and moods in silence than let them play worry-ball with them. Everything that ever comes out of that game is much to diluted and contorted for Al to really gain anything form it.

Rose and Scorpius are still worried about him, Al can tell, but he doesn’t think that’s really about Felina.

Felina, in all honesty, probably isn’t why anyone should be worried about him anyway.

Sometimes he thinks about whether that’s weird or not, but he honestly can’t tell.

Al thinks about trying to put a stop to that worrying, but ultimately decided that it is a fruitless endeavour to even try. They know him too well, and he doesn’t really fancy keeping more secrets from them, when he’s just told them one of the big ones.

There are, of course, still all of the weird late-at-night feelings he can’t talk about, but that’s different.

So he lets them worry about him for once without the constant signals to back off or ignore the issue. It’s new, but it’s also a lot less exhausting than what he’s done before. Maybe it’s just another way of being more honest, and there’s something freeing about that, too.

Parts of the cloud of assumptions that have hung between them so heavily at times start to thin out, and Al only now realises how much of a burden they’ve been. He thinks there have been reasons for his secrets at times, and maybe they were even valid, sometimes, but this, undoubtedly, feels better.

So there’s going to art galleries with Fawley, and, increasingly, just on walks around the city and other random outings, and the extra breathing space he didn’t realise all of his secrets were taking up.

There’s also the fact that for once, he isn’t waiting for anything, doesn’t have anything to harbour anticipation for anymore. (Despite—well, but that’s—not a good thought. Far off, still, hopefully. In any case, it’s not the same, and Al certainly doesn’t want to think of it in the same way.)

He’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not. It certainly feels odd. For once, he doesn’t have any future point to direct his thoughts and feelings at, nothing to hold out for, nothing to take the sting of the present.

Al’s not very good at being present. It doesn’t come natural to him, his instinct is to get lost in—something. It’s just that right now, he doesn’t have a whole lot to get lost in. It makes everything that happens right now feel so much more intense in a way that almost unsettles him, especially as he still feels like the path to this ominous here and now, as stupid inspirational quotes like to put it, has been paved by mistakes and bad decisions.

At the same time, he has struck the kind of equilibrium where, even if he doesn’t want to say it, or even think about it too explicitly, he knows that he isn’t going to change anything right now. It’s the result of a combination of indecisiveness and cowardice. He isn’t settled or determined enough to decide on anything he could change, and in the end, inaction is always the easiest choice, the one that makes him feel the least complicit in—well, he isn’t exactly sure what. Maybe in not being good enough.

Except it still makes him feel like he isn’t, because if he was, he would be doing something, wouldn’t he? It’s still a spiral after all, and it plays in his head almost every night.

But during the day, when he can set that aside for a little, this new sense of presence almost seems calming in a way. Everything that’s happening, is happening now, because the future is too scary and too overwhelming anyway. Al doesn’t know what he’s doing anyway. In rare moments of calm perspective he kind of knows that he probably won’t figure it out any time soon. And that’s that.

So he lets his friends check in on him three times a week without being too embarrassed. He gets even better at cooking balanced meals. He looks into a new London art gallery for him and Fawley to go to every week.

One day, when they find closed doors, because Al failed to read the flyer correctly and the place is actually closed on Tuesdays, they just walk along the city instead the way Al still does sometimes, and Al shows Fawley how he finds inspiration in the filth of the street, leaves falling of trees or the light reflecting in the windows of a cheap, run-down coffeeshop.

Al always has a cheap, single-use camera, that he buys at the drug store and only works until the film inside is used up, in his bag for those kinds of occasions, so he can look back at the pictures when he paints.

Fawley, who really only paints faces and usually those of people who come to him willingly, hasn’t seen that part of Al’s process in any detail before, has never played any part in it. That is all Al, has been a thing before they even met and it’s something they decidedly haven’t shared before. Nevertheless, he seems fascinated by it, happy to tag along.

It’s fun. It’s a fun day.

* * *

Scorpius and Rose are very busy people. That has always been true, simply because they tend to occupy themselves with things that take a lot of time and work and then they throw themselves right into it. That has in no way changed.

Al still sees them a lot. It’s just the kind of friendship they have. It’s not the same as it was in Hogwarts, but still, when Al doesn’t see them for more than a few days, he feels weird. They’ve never articulated it, but Al is pretty sure they feel the same way.

Now, Rose and Scorpius are perhaps even more busy. Al thinks it might have something to do with settling into adult life or something. Scorpius, for once, has a job at the ministry he actually intends to stay in, and Rose is just about finishing up the first part of her healer training.

Despite all of that, Al sees them more than ever.

There might be less of all of them hanging out together, awkwardly going to bowling alleys or getting butterbeer together or having a games night at Scorpius’ and Rose’ flat, but Scorpius keeps coming up with stuff he wants to discuss over lunch and Rose makes an actual time plan for them to go running together despite her crazy shifts. Sometimes, and this is something Al might never get used to, she even comes around to the flat, allegedly to say hi to Fawley.

Most of those encounters are short, and a little hurried, but that doesn’t change the sincerity of them, especially when the mask over the effort of it all wears a little thin.

Al tries his best to be there every time. He doesn’t know how else to say that he appreciates it.

“Hey”, Al says, steps slowing down as he enters Soho Square Gardens and halts right before Scorpius, leaning on his crutches today. “Wasn’t expecting you here.”

Scorpius smiles crookedly. “Rose is stuck at St. Mungo’s.”

Al grins back at him. “So she sent you instead.”

The jab in his words isn’t apparent, and Scorpius is bound to take it in a joking way anyway.

Sure, Rose works a lot, and even more so in the recent months, as she’s getting closer to finishing the general part of her healer training, moving on to several years of specialization, but so does Scorpius. He just has more regular working hours.

Scorpius smiles. “Yeah, she says she’s sorry, she’ll make sure the plan holds up next month—”

Al waves it away. “The plan was bound not to work. Things change too fast. Emergencies happen. I can jog on my own.”

It’s true, anyway. He started jogging because Rose dragged him out to do it, but by now, he’s so used to it that he’s happy doing it on his own.

“Yeah, well”, Scorpius says, frowning slightly, “She didn’t want you to be waiting.”

“Thanks for coming to tell me.”, Al says, and bites back down on the comment that Rose could have just sent an owl telling him that. He knows that’s not what it is about and by now, he kind of thinks that the jogging also never really was about the jogging—it’s Rose’ way of checking in with him without having to let him feel that.

Al appreciates the sentiment, even though he thinks that by now he’s fine without it. But he can handle being worried about, gets it even.

With a glance, he locates the next park bench and helps Scorpius settling down there.

“So”, Al says, “What’s new?”

Scorpius shrugs. “Not a lot.” His eyes are darting across the walkway and over the trees, making it clear that his answer isn’t complete. “We’re quite busy, I guess, but you know that. Rose has another exam coming up—”

Al makes a mental note to show up with some food at their flat at some point.

“Is she stressed?”

“Like she always is, but no worse than that.”

Al nods. “Yeah, you just have to make sure—”

“—she gets enough sleep, yeah, I know.”, Scorpius finishes and they smile at each other. His pale face and the shadows under his eyes stand out to Al, even though he’s sure his own aren’t looking much better.

“What about you, are you getting enough sleep?”

Scorpius shrugs again, but his eyes are wandering again, taking on an absent look Al knows well. “You know me, I’ve been thinking…”

Al does know Scorpius, but he thought his friend was done with that sort of thing. Then again, it’s Scorpius. There is no being done with him, even if there should be.

“You’re not messing things up for yourself, are you?” The remark is half-joking, but only half.

“Not trying to.”, Scorpius says, stretching his fingers in his lap, “I’m just having thoughts.”

He says it like it’s a force of nature, and maybe he’s not so wrong about that. But most people don’t work like Scorpius does. Al certainly doesn’t.

But he works differently enough that he has a perspective to give, sometimes.

“Want to tell me about it?”

Scorpius shakes his head. “Not yet. There’s nothing, really—I might not even do anything about it.”

Al wonders if Scorpius can believe himself that. Al knows he himself doesn’t, but he’d kind of like to see himself proven wrong. It would be easier for Scorpius. But then again, easy isn’t always the right thing for people, and Al wouldn’t try to stop him.

“Sure”, he says, “When you get there, then.”

“How are you doing?”, Scorpius swaps it around.

Al stretches his arms. “Same old. I don’t sleep too well, but Fawley’s been doing okay, so I don’t really have anything to complain about.”

It’s really the truest response he could give.

Scorpius nods, doesn’t offer a comment, doesn’t push for more, either.

He’s used to those kinds of reports from Al. They’re not exciting, but Al doesn’t have a very exciting life, most of the time. What changes from day to day, week to week, are his paintings, the works of art he makes, or thinks about making, but that’s never been anything to talk about, either.

“Rose is thinking about her specialisation.”, Scorpius says out of the blue.

It’s nothing new, they’ve talked about this before, Rose has told Al about the decision coming up and the different options, but when Scorpius says it, he means it as a lead-up.

“Oh?”

“Yeah”, Scorpius says, “She’s thinking about—” He pauses for a moment, scrunching up his eyebrows in thought. “I forget the word, it’s the thing about what magic does to your body.”

_Oh._

“You mean like curse damages?”, Al asks, anyway.

“Kind of.” Scorpius hesitates. “But also your own magic. What it can do to you.”

His voice shakes a little at the end.

Al breathes in and sighs. He knows what Scorpius is thinking.

“Have you talked about it?”

“A little.”, Scorpius says, not offering any details.

Al stays silent, waiting for him to continue and eventually, he does.

“I don’t want her to try to cure me.”

It almost sounds like a challenge, like Al might argue him on it.

Al won’t. He gets it. At least he thinks he does.

“You don’t.”, he says instead.

“It’s too much”, Scorpius says.

“Too much of what?”

“Too much of everything. Too much responsibility, too much pressure. It’s too close. It would be everything—it can’t be everything for her, I can’t be. That’s too much. What if it doesn’t work? I’ll be her failure. I can’t be her failure, I need to be—”

His voice breaks, but it sounds steady when he picks the thread back up. “I need her to love me, not to fix me.”

Al floods with sympathy. “She loves you”, he says, because that’s the first thing, that’s the most important thing.

“I know—“, Scorpius says, but Al talks on.

“and you don’t need fixing. If someone finds a way to give you an easier time, that’s great, but you’ll be fine either way. You’ve dealt with this for a long time, and you will keep dealing with it.”

“Yeah”, Scorpius says, “But—”

“And you know, it’s not necessarily about you.”

Scorpius doesn’t say anything, clearly thrown off.

“There are so many other people that could be helped with that—remember Mary?”

Scorpius winces. “Things like that don’t happen as much anymore.”

They don’t. Thankfully.

“No, but wasn’t that one of the reasons Rose wanted to be a healer in the first place?”

Scorpius throws him a surprised look. “Really?”

Al blinks, taken aback. “I mean—I always figured.” He searches his brain for when Rose told him about that, but comes up empty. Still, he’s sure it’s true. 

“Huh.”, says Scorpius.

“And even besides that”, Al says, remembering something else, “just think of all the kids you go visit—some of them struggle with the magic in their bodies, too, right?”

“Yeah”, Scorpius says, “Of course, I just—”

He frowns and looks at the sky, hands fiddling with each other. “Now I feel stupid.”

He says it in such a profound way, Al almost has to laugh.

Scorpius glances over and says: “Shut up!”, even though Al hasn’t said anything.

Now Al really does laugh.

“Yeah, yeah.” When he sobers up again he adds: “You know, sometimes you get into your own head too much and then you lose touch with what’s actually real and what makes sense. It helps when you say something before it gets out of hand.”

Scorpius throws him a look that goes on for a little too long.

“What?”, Al asks.

This time it’s Scorpius who sighs. “Nothing.”

“Well”, Al says, “Go talk to Rose. I’m sure she’ll tell you something similar.”

* * *

Sometime in November, an unexpected letter reaches Al. It’s maybe not completely surprising, in parts, but Al actually figured if he was going to get it, that would have happened a while ago. But it hasn’t.

Perhaps it’s because it’s been long enough since Al’s last major fuck-up, but seeing Lucy’s loopy handwriting on the heavy Hogwarts parchment actually sends a thrill of joy through him.

As his eyes rush over her words, his eyebrows slowly move closer to his hairline. If the letter was unexpected, its contents are more than surprising, Al thinks, putting the letter down for a moment and looking out the window across the room.

Surprising, but in no way unpleasant.

He looks back down at the parchment and reads it over again, more carefully this time.

The first part of it is regular enough.

 _Dear Al,_ Lucy writes, _I hope you are doing alright and not beating yourself up too much over things. I’ve heard about parts from it, but Rose won’t give me any details. I suppose I’ll just have to get the full story at Christmas._

_That’s not actually why I’m writing you, though, which is definitely a testimony to the fact that NEWT year is beating my ass. I don’t remember you and the rest of the gang being this stressed when you were in my place. Honestly, I think if I knew what I know now, I wouldn’t have gotten on your nerves so much._

Al seriously doubts that. As the baby of the entire extended family, Lucy’s perhaps the epitome of the curious, annoying younger cousin to basically everyone, but Al and Rose maybe even more so than the rest of the family. Al isn’t sure why, but during their Hogwarts years, Lucy, despite being four years younger, was constantly butting into their business, always wanting to know all about it. Al doesn’t really know what she does with the information, but he suspects that she’s using it for evil.

Despite that, they (Scorpius included) have gotten used to it for the most part, which is why Al still feels bad for sort of falling out with her last year. They’ve made up since then, but it hasn’t been the same. But maybe it will be, considering the next sentence.

_I’m actually writing to ask you for some advice. And help, maybe._

What comes after that is—well, it’s a bit of a ride, but not in a bad way. It’s actually—well, it’s kind of terrifying, but it’s also really damn cool. Cool and terrifying in a way that Al has always secretly envied his older cousins and even his siblings for, but reading Lucy’s letter he doesn’t feel like that at all.

He’s almost surprised by that. Maybe he’s gotten over that, or maybe it’s just—well.

He doesn’t really get why in the world she would want his advice for this, instead of someone’s who actually has any kind of experience doing anything cool and terrifying at all, but it’s not like he’s going to refuse to help.

And so Al gets himself a piece of paper and starts drafting a reply.

To his own surprise, he has—he actually has ideas about this, knows things that maybe she wouldn’t. It takes him almost an entire hour to write his response, and it ends up being quite long. He reads over it, then reads Lucy’s letter again to make sure he hasn’t missed a question. His eyes get stuck on the opening paragraph again and the remark about Christmas.

Hasn’t he decided that it feels better to be less secretive about stuff?

Al sighs, and on a whim, he adds a postscript that is almost as long as the rest of the letter, explaining to his little cousin, of all people, what happened with him and Felina. There’s no real reason to do that, except that she wants to know and that she might be mildly annoying about it the next time he sees her, but then again, there’s also no real reason to keep it to himself.

 _Don’t go around telling everyone, though_ , he adds for good measure, _I’m kind of tired of it all and I don’t want it to be a big thing. I hope that satisfies all your curiosity. Please don’t use your power for evil, I’m not sure the world could handle that._

Lucy’s response comes barely a week later, and to Al’s relief, she doesn’t actually have a whole lot to say to the whole story. That, in a way, is also typical.

 _Damn,_ she writes, _that really sucks._

That is actually her only comment to the entire thing, in all it’s reality TV-worthy glory. Al thinks it’s the best thing he’s heard on the topic so far.

She has, however, a lot to say about everything else that Al’s written. This next letter, too, will be a long one. Al is actually excited for it.

* * *

When Christmas comes around, Al takes off precisely one day, just as he always does, so he can get to the traditional Weasley Christmas dinner at the Burrow. He’s already filed his paperwork for it when it occurs to him that he actually could take more, considering he doesn’t need to save up vacation days for the summer this year.

Well, it’s not like he really has anything he needs days off around Christmas for anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. In the end, Cath and the others who probably have actual plans and people to see don’t have to work as much around the holiday season.

Al has just about ticked off his list of Christmas preparations (it mostly consists of which presents to get for whom, a question that gets seriously complicated with a family of the size of his), when something occurs to him.

“Alistair?”

Fawley is sat in the art room, somewhere Al only just can’t see him through the open kitchen door, but the response comes swiftly.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing on Christmas day?”

There’s a pause and without actually seeing his face, it’s left to Al to imagine Fawley’s expression.

“What I always do!”, the response comes back a moment later.

Al frowns, struggling to remember what that might be. “What do you always do?”

There’s another pause, longer this time. Al’s brain letches onto it and— _oh._

“What you always do.”, Al repeats. As in always. Not every year. Always.

His heart breaks a little. He isn’t sure why this has never occurred to him before, like the past years he hasn’t payed any attention at all, in a way that now seems impossible.

He could say something, probably even should, but—

Really, there’s only one thing he can think of, an immediate solution in his mind that he doesn’t really need to think for, anyway. Maybe he is his parents’ child after all.

“Wanna do something different this year?”

* * *

Grandma Molly and Grandpa Arthur don’t mind. Of course they don’t. Never has anyone not been welcome for Christmas at the Burrow. It’s why Carolina comes every year. Also maybe because she doesn’t want to offend Lucy.

Al is sure that if he had ever had any friends without a place to go it would have been the same story. Well, and there would have been his parents, of course, who are the same in a lot of ways.

It hasn’t ever applied until now.

“It can be a bit intense.”, Al tells Fawley in the morning before they leave.

He’s already said it at least twice, but he feels like it bears repeating. Christmas with his family _can_ be a bit intense. More than a bit, actually.

“Can’t be that much more intense than you.”, says Fawley.

Al actually has to do a double-take. “I’m not—I’m nothing in comparison.”

He really isn’t. In comparison, he’s a washed-out watercolour sketch, while the rest of his family—maybe some bizarre artwork drawn exclusively with neon markers.

“I think—“, Fawley starts and Al knows what he wants to say.

“No.” He shakes his head for extra emphasis. “We’re going. We’re definitely going.”

Fawley, over the last couple of days, seems to have resigned himself to his fate. It’s a rare victory for Al, who doesn’t usually win any prizes for stubbornness. The reason for that could be that everyone around him is just that much more stubborn, not that he isn’t, but still.

“Tell me everyone’s names again.”, Fawley says instead.

Al groans. “That’ll take an hour!”

Upon Fawley’s insistence, he’d spent a significant amount of time describing every single person that would come. Not only took the whole thing ages, it was actually hard to come up with a solid description for everyone. It’s not that Al doesn’t know them well enough or that they aren’t all interesting people, but he’s known them for all his life. Or, in the case of those of his cousins that are younger than him, all of theirs. When he comes up with something to say, it sounds hollow and wrong. Not because it’s untrue, but because it’s just isn’t enough. It doesn’t explain the parts of their family that can be put in words.

On the other hand, he gets the awkwardness of celebrating Christmas with a bunch of people you know nothing about, so he makes the effort anyway.

They arrive at the Burrow by floo. Al himself would have probably just hopped on a broom, his preferred mode of transport when just walking isn’t an option, but such a journey would be too exhausting for Fawley, so they line up in the queue in front of the fireplace at the _Leaky Cauldron_ instead, on this day longer than on probably any other.

When they make it out on the other side, clothes only slightly marked with black streaks of cinder and both of their spines (thankfully), intact, the lounge at the Burrow is already more than full. Al’s parents are there, so are Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur, Uncle Charlie who’s home from Romania, and Aunt Hermione. Al’s cousins Molly and Minnie are helping Grandma Molly in the kitchen as, even in her old age, she refuses to give up all control of it. Nobody really minds, of course, but she always has an army of helpers ready. Actually, Al usually joins in with that. By now, he almost manages to meet his grandma’s standards and besides, he likes to feel useful.

Today, however, he has to do introductions.

“Merry Christmas”, Al says, a little awkwardly, clutching his bag.

It’s loud enough to halt the group at the table in their conversation—something about Quidditch, if Al has to guess.

“This is Alistair”, Al says, unsure if he’s supposed to offer more of an explanation.

“Merry Christmas!”, Fawley says, repeating Al’s words. Somehowm, he makes them sound less weird and awkward, though not by that much.

The awkwardness lasts for a beat, before Aunt Hermione comes over to introduce herself and wraps Fawley up in a conversation about the portraits at the headmaster’s office in Hogwarts. Fawley’s painted at least two of them. Possibly three, Al isn’t sure. He kind of thinks that Hermione mostly wants to get out of the Quidditch conversation.

After that, it’s a little easier. Al’s family is naturally welcoming, accustomed to open doors and ready visitors, even at Christmas. Maybe especially then.

Al hangs around for a bit, before he decided it’s safe to leave Fawley with Hermione for a while. It takes him almost the entirety of the next hour to greet everyone. It’s only a little because there are so many people. It’s also because they are all over the house, in endlessly reforming groups and everyone chats with everyone a little bit, just to catch up. There’s no need to hurry with everything.

“Rose and her boy went outside with Gracie”, Aunt Fleur tells him when he comes around to her. She winks conspiratorially and Al can’t help but let out a sigh of relief.

It’s not like he can’t handle himself at his own family reunion, but it’s always better with Rose and Scorpius there. More comfortable. Like Al has his own corner.

“Thanks”, he tells his aunt. Then he frowns. “Are Vic and Teddy here already?”

He hasn’t seen them, but if Gracie is here—

Fleur shakes her head. “Ah, no, Victoire is still busy at the shop, always so busy, even on Christmas day—they will arrive later, but Bill and I brought Gracie—she needs to see her grandparents!”

Al grins at her. Aunt Fleur doesn’t look like the kind of woman to be proud of being a grandma, actually she doesn’t really look like a woman that’s a grandma at all, but that’s false on both accounts. She is very proud of it.

Al makes a few more lines of small talk, looks around the room shortly to see Fawley still in conversation with Aunt Hermione, before he ducks out into the yard.

It snowed over night and the hills are covered in gentle white, but the weather’s nice now, the sun reflecting so brightly off the snow, Al has to squint before his eyes adjust to it.

His friends are easy to find, like dark spots in between all the white. They’re quite obviously building a snowman, or at least something along those lines.

Little Gracie is leaning against a snowball almost as tall as she is, shrieking as Scorpius pokes her side. Rose laughs.

Al smiles, then he freezes. This is— _chill out,_ he tells himself. _That’s not gonna happen for a while._ But it might, at some point. What a weird thought.

Gracie is the first to turn around.

“Uncle Al!”, she screams, running towards him. Al opens his arms and rushes a bit forward to prevent her from falling. She’s quite steady on her feet now, but the snow is slippery and Al likes to be careful.

“Hey, Gracie”, Al says.

She looks at him very seriously, then she says: “Santa came to our house today!”

Al mimics surprise. “Really?”

He’s not sure if he’s good with children, especially, mostly he doesn’t really know how to deal with them. People usually treat them as if they are a little stupid, which mostly works out, because they legitimately don’t know that much about the world, and don’t mind being told stuff all the time as much as adults do, or rather, they are more used to it. Or something. Al doesn’t quite know how it works. Maybe they don’t notice it as much.

But Al feels stupid talking to people like he knows more than they do, even if they are tiny children, but he doesn’t know how else you’re supposed to do it either. Children usually don’t want to talk about paintings, which is the only area Al feels like he has any actual significant knowledge. Mostly, that’s true in general for all people, children or not, but still. In the end, he usually just tries to be an attentive listener instead.

It seems to work, kind of, considering Gracie has always been fine with him the odd time he was sent to babysit. He thinks she likes him well enough, but it’s hard to tell.

So, he listens to her entire story about Santa and how he came through the chimney like it’s breaking news. He thinks it’s the best he can do.

“Hey”, Rose says, when they catch a break.

“Hi”, Al says back, “hiding out here with the children?”

His hands are, upon request, already busy forming a new snowball for whatever work of art is actually planned here.

Rose grins widely. “No hiding happening. We are just being very considerate and relieving Fleur and Bill from their grandparently duties because we’re good godparents.”

Al snorts. “Sure.”

Rose catches his eyes and they both laugh.

“What exactly are you building out here?”, Al asks, eyeing Scorpius, who is carefully arranging one of the balls on top of another, like it’s science.

Rose shrugs. “Regular snowman, I guess?”

Al purses his lips together, thinking. “You could make Santa—maybe with some reindeers and a sled, that would be cool, right?”

He’s already considering in his brain how he would do it, not too detailed, but enough that anyone would recognise it.

“Sure, if we had all day”, Rose says, mildly sarcastic.

Al pouts, wants to argue that it wouldn’t take all that long, really, with a little bit of magic, because he knows just how he would do it, but he holds off.

“Wait”, he says instead, “You don’t?”

“Well”, Rose says, still smiling, “For one, Gracie gets cold at some point, so we probably should go back in soon. Also, we’re going to Scorpius’ dad for dinner, so we actually don’t have time forever. We came especially early so we could see everyone.”

Al doesn’t point out how, instead, they’re building snowmen in the yard with their niece. He gets it. He also remembers her telling him this beforehand, or maybe it was Scorpius, he’d just forgotten about it.

“Missing grandma’s turkey then?”

Rose grimaces. “I know, it’s a travesty. But I’m sure Draco will whip up something great, too.”

Scorpius seems to have heard this, coming up to them, he says: “Don’t worry, father’s ordered food for us.”

Rose grins. “Christmas is saved.”

Scorpius shrugs. “Personally, I think he could have tried this year. He’s really getting better.”

Rose looks right over his head, mouthing ‘Eternal optimist’ at Al, who can barely hold back a snicker. He, too, remembers Draco Malfoy’s cooking from when he used to visit Scorpius at home. It used to be—well, it used to be a bit of an adventure. Even if it has gotten better over the years, as even Rose will admit on her good days.

“Well, I’m sure some leftovers will make their way to yours either way”, Al says, “Grandma Molly is always so worried you aren’t getting enough to eat.”

As if in sync, they all look back at the house. Cousin Molly is visible through the kitchen window, artfully arranging—something. You can’t really see from the distance, but Al is sure it will look great. That’s kind of Molly’s thing.

“We should get back inside, anyway.”, Rose says, “You know, socialise and stuff.” She’s right, Al thinks. He himself probably should save Fawley from his family at some point. He doesn’t get the chance to say that, though.

Rose looks back at the three stacked snowballs. Gracie has found some stones somewhere to give it eyes. “Well, if the snowman adheres to the Al standards of quality.”

It’s a joke, mostly, but Al can’t help but be a bit indignant anyway. He just cares about making things look good. Why make a boring normal snowman when you can make a creative one instead? But after years, he knows that trying to make Rose understand that kind of thinking is a lost cause, so he gets out his wand instead.

With a flicker of his wand and a whispered incantation, the snowman lights up in an array of different colours, looking a bit like a rainbow in the midst of the black and white of the winter.

Gracie lets out a squeal of joy and throws her arms around the snowman, almost cracking the two tiny twigs she’s put in for arms.

“Look!”, she yells, “Look, it’s like a rainbow!”

She turns back at them and reiterates: “Auntie Rose, did you see! It’s in colours!”

“Yes”, Rose says, “It’s very nice, isn’t it?”

Gracie makes Rose hug the snowman, too, and Al ushers Scorpius in so he can take a picture of the three of them with the throwaway camera in his bag. There are some upsides to having the thing on his body literally all the time.

Not long after that, Rose decides that they do have to go inside now, unless they want to unleash Cousin Victoire’s (Gracie’s mum’s) anger by potentially freezing her daughter. And Aunt Fleur’s. And Grandma Molly’s. Perhaps a couple more people. It’s certainly not a risk they want to take.

As they usher the little girl back inside under the moderate protests (“But the snowman has colours!” “They will still be there later, and we need to warm up a little!”), Scorpius and Rose share a look. It’s so obviously supposed to go over his head, Al can’t keep himself from asking.

“What?”

He looks from one to the other.

“Nothing”, Scorpius says, grinning broadly, “You’re just such a show-off.”

Al shrugs. “That’s not what I meant to do!”

It really wasn’t, but they don’t seem to believe him.

“I just like things to look nice!”

“Sure”, Rose says, her grin betraying any doubt that she actually means it. A second later, however, she frowns. “That’s not actual paint, though, right? It’s not bad for the environment or anything?”

Al rolls his eyes. “What do you take me for? It’s not like that’s a hard spell.”

Scorpius and Rose share another look, and this time Al doesn’t bother to ask.

“Gracie likes—“, he starts to say, as they walk into the kitchen, shaking the cool of their limbs. He doesn’t finish the sentence though, too distracted with the flurry of the room.

It was pleasantly full before, people everywhere talking, playing games and doing household chores, but now it’s positively packed.

It seems like Victoire managed to get away from her shop, because she and Teddy are making their way over, not yet wearing one of the famous Weasley jumpers, indicating that they’ve probably arrived all of two seconds ago.

Teddy flashes Al a smile as his daughter tells him about the colourful snowman, his colours flashing in a similar fashion for a second before they go back to their signature turquoise. Al smiles back and Teddy taps his shoulder in greeting.

Al knows Teddy well, and he still sees him reasonably often, more than a lot of his cousins. When Al was little, Teddy used to come to their house for dinner all the time. Al always liked that, because Teddy was older and cool, but also really nice and didn’t treat Al like a stupid kid who knew nothing, even if he probably was. He still comes around now every once in a while, when Al goes to see his parents on Sundays.

Al’s still smiling as turns his head to scan the room. His friends are right beside him, he’s making use of his obscure special tricks, it’s Christmas. That’s something to smile about.

“Hi.”, James says, so flatly it’s almost like the words have been run over by the Knight Bus. “Al.”

Al’s stomach drops and his smile right with it. He isn’t really sure what’s happening, but it can’t be good. His brother is heading right at him with a determination that makes Al uneasy and a tense look in his eyes.

“Hi”, Al says back, unsure what else is appropriate.

James is acting very un-James-like, and Al isn’t really sure what to do with that. Usually his brother makes a few jokes Al doesn’t appreciate and creates a general fuss wherever he goes, but at the same time, he has a certain kind of levity around him. It’s why people like him. Dark and gloomy James—well, that’s just weird and frankly, a bit concerning.

It seems like he wants something from Al, but he can’t quite figure out what that might be, and that makes him nervous. It’s not really in the script of how they interact usually. Usually, James tries to mess with Al or make fun of him in some way and Al—well, Al tries to avoid that.

It’s not malicious or anything, years have taught Al that that’s just kind of what James is like, which, well, Al doesn’t really get James, but whatever. James doesn’t really Al him either. Al has made his peace with that.

Still, he usually kind of knows how to deal with him, but this situation—Al doesn’t know what’s going on. In all honesty, he wasn’t even sure if James was coming to Christmas dinner at all. Sure, it’s _Christmas dinner,_ but it’s also _James._ He isn’t exactly predictable, he likes to make his own entrances. Sure, Al figured he’d come around sometime around the holiday, but when Al asked Lily a few days ago if the two of them were catching an international floo together, she didn’t know anything about his plans, either.

Al remembers quite exactly what she said: “You know James, he disappears and shows up whenever he likes.”

Well, it seems like James decided to show up this time, after all.

Maybe, Al thinks, James is about to mess with him a little, even if Al doesn’t really know in what way yet. Well, he’s sure to find out soon.

“You getting caught up in any new cases?”, Al tries when James doesn’t say anything more.

His brother snorts and makes a hand gesture like it doesn’t even matter. “Confidential.”

“Oh.”, Al says. He hasn’t considered that before. Al basically never thinks of legal stuff like that, but it kind of makes sense.

“Well”, Al says, “Whatever you’re doing, I hope it works out for you.”

It’s not a very heartfelt whish, to be honest, but that isn’t because Al doesn’t want James’ stuff to work out, it’s just that he already knows that it will. Stuff always works out for James. He’s brilliant like that. And confident. And ambitious.

Al flickers his eyes around the room briefly. Rose is still standing close, talking to Vic, but he can feel her eyes gliding back to him. Fawley’s sitting across the room, chatting with Lucy, who, like James, must have arrived at some point while Al was outside with Rose and Scorpius.

“Anyway”, Al says, still clueless what James could want and, frankly, running out of patience for this conversation, if it can be called that anyway, considering Al really is the only one saying anything of real substance, “I should go and say hi—”

His words are already fading and he’s stepping around James, but James’ hand closes around Al’s before he can move away properly, old Quidditch instincts apparently still very much intact.

“Al”, James says again, and he’s not speaking very loudly in the very loud room, but nevertheless, his words seem to cut into Al’s brain like one of the more expensive knives they have would through a carrot, “What the hell are you doing?”

Something in Al’s chest plummets, like it’s been held up by something fragile like a balloon, and with an instant, James has popped it.

It’s not like Al isn’t familiar with the sentiment. Really, it’s kind of what he’s been asking himself for months now, with intermittent phases of ignoring it, as to not to go crazy over the whole thing. Still, having someone else say it so blandly like that, it’s—it’s different. Not in a good way.

A little like the drop in his stomach won’t end at the floor, but dive down to the middle of the earth. Maybe further.

“I—“, he says, but he doesn’t know what it is that he wants to say. Is there even a response for that?

James doesn’t wait for the rest of it. He turns to face Al properly, not letting go of his arm. “Why’d you bring him?”

“I—what?”, Al replies, confused. Nothing is making any sense here. “It’s Christmas, James.”

“Yeah”, says James, “It’s _Christmas._ ”, like that explains anything. “It’s a family thing.”

“What?” Al’s stomach isn’t quite coming up from the center of the earth yet, but the ensuing void in his chest makes room for some anger quite nicely. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s for family!”, James insists.

Al’s face is burning. “That’s ridiculous, James, you know what we’re like, we don’t—besides, since when have you cared about that?”

James shuffles on his feet. “I care about family.”, he says, lifting his chin.

It’s not what Al had been talking about, he meant since when the hell did James care about who anyone was bringing for events that were, strictly speaking, for family? If anything, James was always one of the least cagey people about that kind of thing. Al still remembers when James brought Dottie to a Weasley-Potter sleepover in Hogwarts.

Still, the way James purses his lips powers the pure fury in Al’s chest, sets it on fire.

“Oh?”, he hears himself says, “Is that why you’re never around? Is that why, half of the time, nobody knows where you are and what the hell _you_ are doing?”

James clenches his fists. “I’m working.”, he says.

“Yeah”, Al says, not even sure what he’s going to say, “And I—”

It doesn’t matter, because Rose is stepping in between them, wearing a strangely angry look.

“What’s going on?”, she asks, tensely, but just as quietly as Al and James have been speaking. Al doesn’t think anyone else has noticed that anything has happened at all, they are all to busy with each other. Rose really must have been paying attention.

“I was asking Al”, James says, and if Al wasn’t so damn angry and hurt and confused and angry he might think his brother sounded like a toddler, “What the hell he’s thinking.”

His words are heavy, and they feel like another kick, pushing back the rage for a second, in favour of more of the falling-feeling. Just for a second, though.

Something in Rose’ face hardens.

“Oh, leave Al alone!”, she hisses, raising her voice just a tiny bit, “Don’t you see that he’s having a hard enough time already?”

Her words take Al by surprise, but the ferocity of them even more so.

“Well”, James says, “When he keeps doing—”

Rose huffs. “You don’t know everything, Jamie.”

This seems to take James aback, at least slightly.

“Get over yourself”, Rose adds, “And Alistair is perfectly nice, by the way, but even if he wasn’t, it’s not like you have to talk to him or anything. There are tons of other people around, so just leave Al alone if you can’t behave. For Merlin’s sake, it’s bloody Christmas!”

James purses his lips and stares back, defiantly.

“Well?”, Rose says, voice well quiet again.

James stares for another moment, then he looks away and stalks off in another room.

Al feels his breathing pick up again. He didn’t realise he was holding his breath until he stopped.

“Thanks”, he says, feeling a little dizzy.

Rose looks back at him, face still full with that strange anger, but there are other things, too. Concern. Something. Rose.

“You’re welcome.”, she says, but doesn’t move away.

Al takes a few steps back against the wall next to the door and takes a deep breath.

“And you were being happy right then.”, Rose says, quietly, shaking her head.

Al looks back at her. She’s not wrong. Right then, before talking to James, he was feeling good. He almost doesn’t hesitate to call it happy, not like when he was talking to Scorpius a while ago. Huh. No, that was happy. Al didn’t realise—well, he didn’t realise that was a thing he was still capable of, while everything was going to hell so much. How did Rose call it? Al is “having a hard time”. He didn’t know both was allowed at the same time.

And maybe it isn’t, because now, Al doesn’t feel happy. He feels… …shaken. Confused. Angry, a little. Tired, a lot.

“Thanks”, Al says again, not sure if he quite means the same thing.

“No worries”, Rose says.

* * *

Al tries to have a good time for the rest of the dinner. It even works, kind of. Rose and Scorpius leave for Scorpius’ dad’s house soon after that confrontation, saying good-bye with concerned glances and caution in their eyes.

Al lets himself enjoy food that he hasn’t made himself for once and takes quiet joy in it when people like the gifts he’s come up with for them. None of it is anything super expensive, Al isn’t exactly swimming in money, but he did try to find something suitable. He himself gets presents, too, of course, but in Al’s view that kind of takes a back seat. Like every year, a few things stand out, for example the book Lily gets him on advanced transfiguration theory which Al has no objective need for but loves anyway and the obligatory actual nice clothes from Victoire. She will never give up on that, Al doesn’t think, but it’s equally unlikely that Al will change his ways any time soon. There’s also his new Weasley jumper, of course, which Al is obligated to love (not that that’s a hardship) and an assortment of sweets and other nice little things.

He spends most of the evening hanging out with Lily, Lucy and Fawley, which seems like a weird combination initially, but pans out quite nicely. Carolina, ever Lucy’s shadow, is there too, but she doesn’t say a whole lot. Al isn’t sure if it’s because she’s intimidated by Lily, him, or perhaps both of them, or maybe that’s just what she’s always like, but Lucy doesn’t say anything about it, so Al figures it must be fine. As fine as anything can ever be.

Al tries to hint at Lucy’s plans a couple of times, but he doesn’t know how secret they are, so he doesn’t dare bring it up directly. They end up talking instead about NEWTs and how hard it is all getting, instead.

It’s not really what Al remembers the most, thinking of that year, but hearing Lucy talk about it, memories still come up. Mostly about his defense classes. What a nightmare, Al is so glad that’s over.

Lucy scoffs when he says that. “Defense isn’t that bad.”

“No, no, it definitely was. Ask Scorpius, he suffered through that with me, I don’t think I can even still do any of the things they made us learn that year.”

“Didn’t you pass, though?”

He did, even if Al didn’t feel at the time like it was in the way that mattered. “Just barely.”

Lucy raises her eyebrows. “I’m sure you can still do some of the Seventh-Year stuff, like—” She thinks for a second. “Surely you can do a patronus.”

Al makes a face. “If I have a good day and the weather is nice.”

Certainly not with any dementors around, which is pretty much the only instance it would be useful. But there aren’t that many dementors anymore, now that they aren’t kept at Azkaban anymore, so Al maintains that it isn’t that much of a gap in his skill set.

“Well”, Lucy says, “I mess up on mammal-to-furniture transformation even when the sun shines, so you’re one step ahead of me. We’re starting human transformations after Christmas and I already feel bad for whoever McGonagall forces to pair up with me.”

“It’ll be fine”, Lily and Al both say at the same time.

Al is startled for a second, looking at Lily.

“It’s just like dying someone’s hair”, Lily says.

Lucy raises her eyebrows. “How?” The disbelief in her voice is so strong, it’s almost funny.

“If you mess up, they just look a bit funny for a while, it doesn’t change anything that matters.”

Lucy does not look reassured by this at all. “Lilu! I’ll kill someone!”

Al bites his lip. “There’s nothing McGonagall can’t fix. And it’ll all work out, with a little studying.”

Lucy makes eye-contact and Al knows what she’s thinking.

“A lot of studying”, she says, resigned.

She seems actually, legitimately worried. And Al—well, she kind of has made herself a lot of work. He gets what she means.

“I’ll help you”, he says, before he knows what he’s saying or what it’s supposed to mean. But he doesn’t want to take it back, even when Lucy stares at him in surprise. “I’m good at studying”, he says, “and I’m good at transfig. I’ll figure something out.”

He hesitates for a moment, then looks at Carolina. “Do you take transfiguration?”

She shakes her head, quickly. “Herbology, Potions, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures and Astronomy.”

“Shame”, Al says, “You could have come, too.”

Her combination, in all honesty, sounds like a nightmare to Al, but that’s really on him more than her.

Carolina shrugs. “I can be Lucy’s guinea pig.”

They all stare at her for a moment, even Fawley, who’s kept out of the conversation so far.

It’s just—it’s a bit of a heavy thing to say, for her, of all people.

She seems to notice, too, pressing her lips together so hard that to Al it looks like it must hurt.

“I don’t really care that much what my hair looks like”, she says after a moment, and the tension diffuses.

Lucy pulls on a strand of Carolina’s hair. “You say that now.” It’s nice and rich and curly, not crazy like Al’s, nice enough to probably warrant being bothered about it, but Carolina just shrugs and glances around the group, as if to check if everyone’s still looking at her. They are, and Al figures he’s doing her a favour by looking away.

* * *

Al is back out in the hall, looking for his bag in the chaos of stuff all across the coat rack, when his brother comes to find him again.

Al’s decided he wants to take some pictures, capture some of the warmth of this strange place maybe, or maybe of Christmas, or all the other stuff that he’s been feeling all day. He wants to capture it in a painting, or maybe more of them, and until he gets around to doing that, photos are a great reminder.

Al is set on keeping that warm feeling safe, in his picture and in his chest, even if it’s felt weird and insecure in there ever since their confrontation earlier. It’s fine now, kind of, the buzz of people and the busy of it all are keeping it away, but Al has a feeling it will fall all over him, once he gets home and that kind of threat is hard to ignore, even for him, who’s pretty good at ignoring things.

And now, in the empty hall, James is looking at him again, where Al can’t really avoid him.

“You need something?”, Al asks. He can’t be bothered to be polite, really, even though he probably should. Al usually tries harder with James, it’s just—it’s hard. And Al knows it’s not entirely James’ fault that it’s hard, because he gets along with other people, usually, it’s just—Al’s tired. He only has so much energy on a given day for that kind of thing.

James looks uncomfortable. Al feels uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry”, his brother says, hand ruffling through his hair in a gesture Al has never understood, but at least he’s looking at him.

Al doesn’t really know what that’s supposed to mean, beyond the obvious, what exactly James is apologising for, and what that means. Does he actually think he’s wrong or does he just feel bad? Both seems wrong in the context of James, and there is also the question of what for, because it seems highly unlikely that he just gets it, all of a sudden, but—well.

Al doesn’t want to have this conversation right now. And more than that, he doesn’t want to fight, because it’s Christmas, and their whole family is here and Al is so bloody tired.

Tired of a lot of things, recently, but he may have been tired of fighting with James for—well, a couple of years at the very least. Possibly his entire life.

“It’s fine”, he says and only holds his gaze for as long as he absolutely has to before he nods awkwardly and creeps back into the kitchen.

Cath has a couple of shifts between New Years and Christmas. It’s weird, because usually she takes time off around them—to visit family, celebrate Christmas, and study for exams, or so Al always assumed. But this year, she seems to be taking more hours than usual, anyway, almost as many as Al.

It not like Al minds, in any way, shape or form, because honestly, of all the people he ever works with, Cath is definitely his favourite. Which is to say, she’s the only one he actually talks to. Not literally of course, there’s small talk with Jared and Meredith and Hope and he kinda knows some vague general facts about their lives, but for the most part, he’s content just working alongside them quietly, saying not much more than hello and good-bye.

Cath is different. He’s always happy to talk to her, even when she’s being nosy. He’s not really sure how or when that happened.

Al doesn’t think he’s quite adopted her nosiness yet, but still, today she seems—well, he doesn’t like it.

“Are you alright?”

“Hm?”, Cath says, or rather, makes the sound, her mind clearly still elsewhere.

She’s making some kind of cocktail. Her hands are moving fast and efficient, and her make-up is on point and there is nothing that would out her as unprofessional or unfocused, it’s just—well.

“Sorry”, she says after a second, “I was just—thinking. Did you need something?”

Al chooses not to repeat the question. “You know, if you need some quiet space again, to study or whatever, you could come over anytime, right?”

Something flickers over Cath’s face, to quick for Al to discern properly.

“Thank you.”, she says and Al thinks something in her voice sounds a little raw, but he isn’t sure.

He looks at her for a second, waiting for a proper answer, but she doesn’t give one. And then there are new customers, and more drinks to make, and ingredients to restock and glasses to clean and the moment is over and the quiver in her voice gone.

And maybe Al’s only imagined it anyway. He doesn’t know her that well, after all. Certainly not well enough to push.

-

“It just—doesn’t—work!”, Lucy exclaims, slamming her wand against the desk with every word.

Al flinches at the sound and puts it out of her hand. “Don’t do that. It’s not safe.”

Lucy rolls her eyes, but doesn’t resist.

“Try again”, Al says, trying to sound encouraging.

Lucy sighs. “Show me again.”

“ _Animalifor.”,_ Al whispers, pointing at the cup in front of him. It promptly turns into a mouse and Al has to hurry to undo the transformation before it can get away.

“That’s the movement, right?”, Lucy says, mimicking Al’s form with her own wand. It is indeed the correct movement.

“Yeah.”

“ _Animalifor!”,_ Lucy says.

The cup grows ears and feet and a tail, but it’s still a cup.

 _“Finite incantatem!”_ , Al interjects, before it can use those legs to run away. That really is the problem with animal transformations isn’t it? Inanimate objects generally don’t move without some other force acting on them. Animals do. And they usually don’t like the idea of staying right where they are.

“Why doesn’t it work?”, Lucy whines.

“You can do it”, says a quiet voice from the other side of the room.

It almost startles Al. Carolina’s barely said a word since he arrived at Lucy’s house to help her study, and the way she sinks into the couch, face hid behind the book, she’s almost invisible.

He doesn’t linger on the distraction, though, he has a mystery to solve. _Why doesn’t it work?_

The wand movement is correct, the pronunciation, too. Those are funnily enough the most common mistakes in transfiguration, even at this level. But it’s not the problem here—

“You’re weighing out your body weight and wand power against the levels of concentration needed, right?, Al asks, “This spell has a low enough level of viciousness, we can discount that.”

“I know”, Lucy says, “That’s what McGonagall always says! But I checked about a million times, it should work! I bet you don’t calculate that any time you transform something.” The annoyance in her voice is palpable.

She’s right. Al doesn’t. He just—well, he just kind of knows, usually.

“You get a feeling for it.”, he says.

“Well, _I_ don’t.”, Lucy mutters and Al isn’t entirely sure if he’s supposed to have heard that.

He hums in response, still thinking.

“Well”, he says, “What are you thinking when you do it?”

Lucy blinks. “What do you mean?”

“What’s going on in your head?”, Al says, silently making a decision. He’s not sure if what he’s about to tell her even makes any sense, only part of it is in the books, it’s just how Al understands it, really—

“I’m thinking about the spell, I guess?”

“What about it?”, Al asks, almost feeling nervous about the answer.

“Just how I need to do it, I guess? You know, the movement, the words? That I hope it works?”

“Works how?”

Lucy is looking at him now like he’s asked what a wand was. “That it transforms into a bloody mouse, obviously.”

“What kind of mouse?”, Al asks.

“What kind of mouse… What kinds of mice even are there?”

Al shrugs. “Different breeds, I suppose? I just mean—What does the mouse look like?”

Lucy thinks about this for a moment. “What’s the mouse supposed to look like?”

“Doesn’t really matter”, Al says, “It’s your mouse.”

“So why are you asking me then?”

“I just mean” Al hesitates. “This isn’t really sound science, but do you know what it looks like? Can you maybe try to imagine it as clearly as you can while you do the spell?”

Lucy looks at him sceptically. “And that works?”

“I’m not sure, but that’s what I do.”

Lucy tries another time.

There’s a loud poof and then—the mouse is strangely large, suddenly occupying the entire table, and Al has to hurry to untransfigure it again.

Lucy rests her head against the table, and lets out a noise somewhere in between a groan and a scream.

“Hey”, Al hurries to say, “That was a lot better!”

“Was it?” Lucy looks back up at him.

“You over-rotated your wrist at the end, but if you fix that, it should work.”

“Are you sure?”

There’s no real way to be sure of something like that. Transfiguration has too many factors and not all of them are even known. Still though—“Pretty sure. Let’s try again.”

By the time Al’s watch begins to make noise in his pocket, Lucy’s managed the spell a couple of times.

Al grimaces. “I’m sorry, I should get going. I need to go to work, and I need to stop by at home before—”

“Yeah”, Lucy says, “Of course, don’t worry about it. I’ve made so much progress today, you don’t even know how long I’ve been stuck.”

Al shrugs. “It’s not that hard, once you get into it.”

There’s a pause.

“Anyway, if you need help again—”

“We’re going back to Hogwarts tomorrow”, Lucy says, “But—”

“We’ll figure something out, yeah?”, Al says, “With the other stuff, too, alright, if you need anything?”

It’s really important to him. He isn’t quite sure why, but he feels so very involved in this, it’s almost a little too much.

“Yeah”, Lucy says, “Thank you—”

Al turns his face away, as if that will stop his blush. “Of course. I’ll write you, alright?”

“Sure”, Lucy says.

Al’s already out the door, when she calls back.

“Al?”

“Yeah?”, he turns back.

He’s not quite fast enough to see her run up to him, and he’s blindsided by her bear hug.

“Good luck, yeah?”, she whispers.

There isn’t any clear thing she’s referring to, but Al gets it all the same.

He nods.

He lets go, and he leaves.

* * *

The thing is, overall, Al isn’t very good with feelings.

Not other people’s, honestly, those are mostly fine, in the sense that he knows what to do with them, for the most part. He even gets them, a lot of the time.

For example, he gets Rose’ feelings, most of the time. Those are easy, for the most part, and it used to be even easier, back before she disappeared into another time in sixth year. Now, there are sometimes flashes of things that Al doesn’t understand, that he cannot understand, because they’re of war and cruelty and other things that Al has never seen but she has. Still, it’s easy, because Rose’ feelings, for the most part, make sense. And, perhaps even more pointedly, they’re always right there in her face, for everyone to read, no matter what Scorpius always says. Al knows that this is true.

Scorpius’ feelings, speaking of him, also aren’t all that hard. Maybe not quite as easy as Rose’, but still. For one, they’re just generally quite loud. Rose’ are too, but not in the same way. Al honestly doesn’t think that Scorpius has ever had a quiet feeling once in his life. Scorpius’ feelings, once there, fill up all of the space around him, and, perhaps more importantly, it fills up all of him.

It’s why he’s like that. It’s why he’s so amazing.

Al, most definitively, is not like that.

His feelings, unlike Rose or Scorpius are hidden things, monsters that lurk in the dark somewhere. He isn’t actually sure where, or if feelings have a location at all. Maybe he’ll paint that at some point.

The Hole Where My Feelings Are Lurking by Albus Severus Potter. An amazing display of modern art, in the sense that it would be just a huge, plain black canvas.

He can already see a pretentious headline for that, where some kind of acclaimed critic pretends they get what he meant by that.

Ha. As if.

Not that Al’s ever put any of his paintings into an exhibit. Usually, Fawley is the only person who sees them before they are shrunk and safely stored somewhere around the flat, probably until forever, or until Al has the immediate urge to look at how much his older stuff used to suck.

Also, Al’s pretty sure that in all of Wizarding Britain, there’s perhaps one magical art critic and that one’s unlikely to bother with him anyway, and even more unlikely to be given a spot in a somewhat well-known newspaper, so that fantasy doesn’t really hold up.

In any case, those are the feelings that Al is really bad with. His own.

He just—doesn’t really see them at all. Doesn’t feel them, if that’s more appropriate.

Well, it’s not that he doesn’t feel them, because of course he does, they’re his feelings, but usually he just. Kind of doesn’t notice? Not until they hit him in the face, or, more often, until they’re gone and he quietly realises, that, whoah, this past month was pretty shit, wasn’t it?

It’s not that he notices nothing about his own emotional state, either, he knows when he’s in a bad mood, or in a slightly better mood, or when he finds something funny, or when he’s hungry or tired. But those aren’t really feelings, those are just—symptoms. Little hints that are supposed to tell him what’s really going on under the surface, how everything connects and what the big picture is.

Al doesn’t have a bloody clue about the big picture and he’s really not all that good at putting it together. It doesn’t seem like an intuitive thing to him, and trying—really trying to figure out why he acts the way he acts and how he is doing, _really—_ it just enables that spiral of guilt that chases him away from all thoughts about that.

He doesn’t really want to examine it. And he also doesn’t really trust himself to, because he’ll think he’s fine, mostly, and then realise two years later that he’s been avoiding most people he loves for absolutely no reason except some unknown feelings he still can’t quite identify.

There’s also that even those tiny hints he gets, moods and reactions and things that come to him so fast they can’t be corrupted by thought or reluctance, so they must be real—well, they don’t make any sense.

Like when the heard about Uncle Ron’s death, all the way back in fifth year, Al knew that he was supposed to be sad. Angry, maybe, or scared, or perhaps even confused. In any case, he wasn’t supposed to giggle without any control, because that’s not what giggling is for.

Or when Felina left, he just kind of—went to work. He’s not sure if ‘going to work’ expresses an emotion other than ‘I need money to live’, but if it does, it’s certainly not the appropriate one either.

Al isn’t sure if it’s his feelings that are weird or just the way they come (or don’t come) out, and he doesn’t like to think about it, but either way, he doesn’t trust it.

What he does instead, as a crutch of sort, is to examine the way other people react to him, searches for little clues in their interactions as to what they think he might be feeling like. It’s convoluted, and not exactly a perfect system, but it still works surprisingly well.

It’s in the way Rose had known he had been happy at Christmas before Al had even realised and how Cath sometimes comments that he’s in a weird mood today and only then Al realises, that yeah, actually, he is.

It’s not always something he does consciously, but it is how, in the following days, he figures that he’s kind of doing alright.

These days, in all honestly, mostly pass in a blur of blandness, comfortable in their banality. comfortable in their banality.

Fawley is doing a little better again, or maybe Al’s just imagining that, it’s hard to tell. In any case, it’s not worse.

Rose has decided that it’s too cold out to jog in January, which may or may not be true, but in either case Al knows that she’s really just saying it because she’s getting too damn busy at St. Mungo’s and just can’t muster the energy up for it anymore. He doesn’t call her out on it, though, because he knows she feels guilty about it anyway, or she would just say the real reason. Instead, he just goes alone.

There’s no real reason to do that, either, except that by now, he’s kind of used to it and it would feel weird to just not do it.

Either way, despite St. Mungo’s or the cold or whatever other reasons there are, Rose letting up on the jogging feels like a sign. A sign that Al is Doing Better. Al feels that that warrants capitals.

Maybe it doesn’t mean that at all. Al isn’t sure if he feels that different, but well—case in point. He’s notoriously bad at judging his own feelings, so it seems safer to trust other people’s assumptions, especially when they know him as well as Rose does.

None of his problems have been solved, per se, but at the same time, he isn’t making himself as crazy about them anymore. They just kind of are. And it’s not fine, but it just is.

He still tries to see either Rose or Scorpius or, at best both of them at least a couple of times a week. They try, too. Al thinks that as long it’s like that, he can probably deal with—well, maybe not everything, but a lot of things. The monsters in his head, for sure, even if they are weird murky feeling he can’t categorise.

Lily goes back to America again, and presumably, James goes with her. Maybe he doesn’t, but then again, it’s not like Al ever really knows what James is doing. In that sense, it’s kind of unfair that it’s Al who people worry about. He’s in London, easy to reach and sort of reliable. Just because he doesn’t have the kind of job that screams success. And throws himself into a crisis every couple of months. And generally makes illogical life decisions.

Al doesn’t usually think like this, comparing other people’s shortcomings to his own, because he doesn’t really like pointing their flaws like that, even in his own head. But sometimes his patience runs a bit thin. And it would be a lot easier if his brother just left him alone. Also, it’s not actually that often that he comes out on top in those kinds of comparisons. Well, kind of, anyway.

And James is kind of leaving him alone, what with probably being in another continent right now. But still.

Al doesn’t bring it up to Lily when she calls to tell him that she got back home fine. He cringes a little at how easily she calls it home, there, but he doesn’t say anything about that, either. It isn’t his to tough and it wouldn’t be fair. Besides, calling another continent is kind of a lot more expensive than just calling someone around London, as Al has figured out by now, and he doesn’t really have the money to start a fight. Nor does he want to, anyway.

Life goes on again.

If Al has learned anything by now, it’s that that’s how it always goes. Stuff happens, then life goes on, and stuff happens again. He’s never really sure where it is in between all that that everything changes so much.

He constructs his life one week at a time, always around the next little moment of happiness. Going to another gallery with Fawley, game night with Rose and Scorpius when he can get it, or otherwise just dropping in on Scorpius’ break, a letter from Lucy, a phone call from Lily every once in a while, having dinner with his parents on Sundays. His routines take care of everything else, and really, in the grand scheme of things, he’s alright with that life.

Maybe not overjoyed or deliriously happy or whatever else he’s supposed to aim for, but that’s alright. It’s alright.

* * *

It’s early evening and Al’s just stepping out of the grocery store, hands full of bags. He usually goes to the closest one, for the simple reason that that way he doesn’t have to awkwardly carry stuff for too long. It really is a miracle that in three years, he hasn’t managed to figure out what kind of bag to bring to make it less awkward.

By early evening, Al means it’s already dark out, but not really late, not even for people with a mostly normal sleep cycle. Then again, it does get dark early this time of the year, so that probably isn’t too well of an indicator.

So that’s what Al’s dealing with at the moment—too many, too thin, too full plastic bags he probably shouldn’t be using, a London sidewalk and the presumably judging eyes of the public (not that anyone’s really looking at him, probably), when suddenly his phone starts ringing.

He almost jumps and most definitely drops two of his bags down onto the sidewalk. Scrambling, he just lets them sit there, and fumbles for the phone instead, pressing at the tiny green button as fast as he can. It’s not like it matters if his yogurt is spilled all over the street if Fawley is—

Al misses the button twice, because he hasn’t gotten his phone out of the pocket of his jacket properly yet and also a little bit because his heart is beating out of his chest and something bad has happened—

“Hello?”, he says, when he’s finally managed to operate the damn thing correctly.

For a moment, there is just silence on the other end—or not silence, rather, noise, but as it’s the airy sort of phone noises you stop noticing once someone’s actually speaking.

Then—

“Al—” The voice is scratchy, and there is a stifled sound, wet and weird, and this isn’t Fawley’s voice at all, this isn’t Fawley, but who else would? Who else even knows this number? Really, it’s only Fawley, and Lily, but this isn’t Lily either, and—

“Cath?”, he asks.

“Yeah”, the voice says on the other side, still sounding weird and scratchy and upset and not like how Cath sounds usually at all and Al knows by now that everyone sounds a little different over the phone, but this is not that, this sounds—

“Listen”, she says, and something, somewhere seems to unravel, and her next words come rapid, “I’m so sorry I’m calling you, I didn’t know who else I could call, I—” Her words break of in another weird wet sound and now Al realises that it’s a sob.

She’s crying, Cath is crying.

“Did something happen?”, Al asks, “Do you need help?”

“Yeah, I” Her voice goes strangely high, “I—Sorry, I don’t—Sally—”

Al waits for her to say more, but she just keeps sobbing.

“Did something happen to her?”, Al asks, trying to make his voice as gentle as possible. “Is she hurt?”

Cath sobs harder.

Al doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing.

“No”, she cries, “No—she—I’m so stupid, Al, I’m so fucking stupid, and now I don’t—”

Al presses the phone between his ear and his shoulder so he can keep listening while he picks his groceries back up. He still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, but he has to do something, and whatever that is will work better when his groceries aren’t all over the sidewalk.

“You’re not stupid”, he says, because he might not know what’s going on, but he knows for sure. “Listen, can you tell me where you are? I’ll come and I can help you sort this out.”

Whatever it is.

“Yeah”, she says, seemingly having calmed down a little, “I’m outside, I—”

“Is there somewhere close by you can wait for me?”

“Uh, if I walk a bit—there’s a Starbucks—” She tells him the street.

“Okay”, Al says, “Stay there, I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Yeah”, she says again, suddenly very quiet, “Thank you—I—”

She doesn’t say anything else.

“Of course”, Al says, before he hangs up.

He puts the phone down and takes a deep breath. He looks down at his groceries.

Okay, one thing after the other.

He pulls his wand into the sleeve of his jacket and puts a spell on himself that makes muggles ignore him, before pulling it out properly and magically transporting his bags onto the kitchen table at the flat. He really hopes he hasn’t just accidentally broken one of Fawley’s ancient teacups, but if so, they’ll have to live with that.

The upside of both walking everywhere you go and also just walking a lot in general is that Al knows his way around in London pretty well. Especially the parts of London he’s sort of consistently in, close to the flat, the _Nightowl,_ or his parents’ house. He knows the street Cath’s mentions and he knows how to get there, too, but walking will take too long, she’d have to wait forever. And Al doesn’t have a good feeling about the whole thing. She probably shouldn’t be alone, or she wouldn’t have called.

Al still isn’t quite sure why she called him, of all people, considering he’s a certified mess of a person as Cath very well knows, and surely there must be people better equipped to handle this situation, but she has, so… Al will do his best.

In this case, his best means he’s going to summon his broom and fly.

It’s mildly crazy, considering he’s still in the middle of the city, even with disguise charms, but Al decides that he doesn’t care. If he flies high enough, it’s too dark to see him anyway.

He touches down in a side alley and shrinks his broom small enough it can go in the back pocket of his jeans. That’s probably not ideal, as far as carrying a broom goes, but whatever. He has other things to worry about.

He steps back onto the slightly bigger road and has to look around for a moment to reorient himself. His eyes glide over the windows and the people until he finds a green sign. Right, Starbucks. He starts towards it.

It’s actually quite busy inside, which isn’t that unusual, considering it’s not really that late, but it still throws Al a little off guard as he stumbles inside. He ignores the line and simply looks around the tables until he kinds Cath.

He almost doesn’t recognise her at first, not because she doesn’t look like herself, she definitely does. It’s just—well, she’s right in the corner, crawled in herself as much as she can sitting in a booth like that, arms hugging her body, posture small. Her hair is slightly messy, not terribly so, but enough to be weird for Cath, who’s usually so neat and put-together.

It breaks Al’s heart a little. But more than that, it makes him scared.

He slows his steps when he approaches her.

“Cath?”, he says carefully, as if he’s afraid she might not be the right person. He isn’t, that’s stupid, but somehow it feels appropriate.

She looks up.

Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her face is spotty.

“Hi”, she says, and she isn’t crying anymore as she must have been before, but her voice still sounds shaky and wrong.

Al sits down next to her, carefully watching her reactions. “Hey.”

He fumbles with a napkin he’s picked up on his way in and hands it to her. He isn’t sure if that helps any, but it feels better than nothing.

She wipes her face with it. “Thank you.”

“No problem”, Al says.

There’s silence for a moment. As much silence as there can be in a semi-busy Starbucks, anyway.

“Can you—can you tell me what happened?”

Cath snivels into her napkin once, then sits up a little straighter.

“I came home earlier today”, she says quietly, her voice still shaking a little, “and I—well, I found out that Sally, well apparently I haven’t been around enough for her to—” Her voice breaks, but she immediately starts again, this time more resolutely. “She’s been cheating on me.”

* * *

So there’s the other thing about Al’s feelings: Sure, he’s bad at identifying them, but that’s only half the story. The other half is the part where he, well, handles them.

He doesn’t—strictly speaking, he doesn’t have all that much experience with that. Because sure, the monsters in the deep end up eating all the happiness-fish and make waves all the way into his fingers so they shake without him noticing sometimes, but they’re still down there in the deeps. And Al isn’t. Or maybe he is, because he _is_ the deep, but as long as Al can, he’ll keep swimming on the surface.

The surface is what he knows, what he can deal with. There’s painting, and school, and work, and reading books, and cooking and being busy and other people, usually.

There’s time to get to the monsters, basically. It’s not like they’ll run away all of the sudden if he just ignores them. Not that Al hasn’t tried that.

Al isn’t used to having emotions fast, and all at once. Scorpius is the one who does that. Scorpius is the one who goes to punch Lucy’s first boyfriend when he breaks up with her in the less gentlemanly manner. Al is the one who gets a something in his stomach and proceeds to stop Scorpius from doing too much damage, because that’s not how things are solved and when Scorpius calms down, he’ll agree with that, too, because really, he’s against violence.

Al’s always thought that if it were just him, finding out that kind of news about someone he cares about, he’d take a minute, or two, feel something, then perhaps dare to make a rude comment in a hallway a month later, but only after assessing for a million years how much would be too much.

As it turns out, Al is wrong about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you liked this chaper, please tell me what you think! Thanks for sticking with me, I promise I'm trying!


	19. drive until you lose the road (or break with the ones you've followed)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al has many feelings, Lucy a problem, Scorpius an idea and Al and Cath talk. A lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It seems I have given up on pretending this story is anything but dilaogue and stuff that leads to more dialogue. Posting this because I finally made myself proof-read it for typos and more importantly, because I need validation. Please validate me.

“Oh.”

Al isn’t prepared for this kind of feeling. He closes his hands into fists in front of him, so that they don’t—well, so he doesn’t do— _something._ He isn’t sure what. Nothing good.

“Yeah”, Cath says. She isn’t looking at him, but at the table in front of her instead.

“What—” _What a fucking bitch,_ Al wants to say. Which—he doesn’t even talk like that. Ever. He really bloody wants to, though.

It’s weird, because for once Al knows exactly how he’s feeling, what this strange flash of feeling and curse words is. He knows that he’s angry, he knows that he’s—furious.

It’s not like he can just say something like that, though, because he doesn’t even know what Cath really is feeling right now and it just—isn’t his place. He hates it when people talk badly about Felina when they don’t know her and this—this isn’t the same situation, but, well, close enough somehow. Feelings don’t make sense and Al doesn’t want to be the person that makes it worse.

“That’s terrible.”, he says instead, which really isn’t any better at all. Way to state the obvious, he should get a medal for that. He’s useless.

Cath doesn’t really react to that. “I just—that’s not what I—it wasn’t supposed to—”

She doesn’t finish the sentence.

Al closes his eyes, opens them again. He’s trying to get this feeling under control. Turns out, even when he knows what’s going on that doesn’t do anything because he still doesn’t know how to deal with it.

He kind of wishes Scorpius was here, because then he would be the one to have an emotion. Al knows how to react in relation to Scorpius’ emotions. But Scorpius isn’t here, he doesn’t even bloody know Cath, it’s just Al in this stupid Starbucks with blood rushing in his ears and clenched fists.

And he doesn’t know the right thing to say, and even if he were to start off his career of being impulsive and emotional, there isn’t even anyone there to punch.

So he tries to push past the blur of all this feeling in his head to actually come up with something helpful.

“Do you like chocolate?”, he tries, and doesn’t wait for an answer, because everyone likes chocolate, “I’ll get you a hot chocolate, alright?”

She sniffles and nods, just the tiniest movement of her chin and Al gets up immediately. Conveniently they’re already inside a place that sells hot chocolate.

He goes up to the counter, orders and pays.

“I’ll pay you back”, Cath says immediately, and her voice almost sounds surreally normal for that, but Al just waves his hand dismissively at her. As if.

“Don’t even think about it.”

He sits down next to her as he hands her the cup, tentatively, unsure if she actually wants contact, but the booth isn’t actually that big and she presses her face against the fabric of Al’s old hoodie on his shoulder, and, oh alright then, that’s fine.

“Thank you.”, she mumbles into it .Al discerns the words more by the motion in the fabric than by the sound.

He feels his skin get a little wet. She’s clearly crying, properly this time, and— _oh. She doesn’t want anyone to see._

Al shuffles a bit to give her more protection without actually disturbing her. She deserves to keep her dignity. Not that crying takes away anyone’s dignity, but. Still.

“It’s not that expensive.”, he says, quietly, even though he has a hunch that the chocolate isn’t really what she means.

He feels her cry harder.

He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t know what to say anyway, but also—she should just have this.

They sit there for a while, as Al tries not to move and glares at people giving them weird looks, or worse, curious ones.

He finds Cath’s hand with his, trying to be reassuring, trying to tell her he’s there with her. That it’s—well, it’s not fine, really, how could it be, but at least he’s there. Even if he doesn’t really know how much of a comfort that really is.

He doesn’t know how long it is until the soft shaking of her crying stops and she shifts.

Her voice is louder, still scratchy, still terrible and not in the way she should sound, ever, if Al were to have any say about it. “What am I even supposed to do now?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

He can say it, because he believes himself. They can fix this.

They better bloody be able to fix this, because terrible people don’t get to have that big a hold on the awesome ones.

He scrambles through the situation mentally, because what actually _is_ the next thing to do? He’s never been cheated on before. Not that there was really an opportunity for anyone to.

“Do you—“, he continues, “Uh, you can come stay with me and Alistair for now, if you—” _if you don’t have a place_ sounds harsh, but Al knows that Cath and her—that girl live together and it doesn’t look like Cath kicked her out. Even though that would have been honestly appropriate, because _fuck her._ “—if you want to.”

She’s gotten her head off his shoulder, but he can still feel the shiver going through her. “Oh, I haven’t even—I—shit.”

Al waits for her to find her words.

“I—I can’t actually ask that of you, can I?”

In that moment, something changes about all that anger in Al’s stomach, and maybe it isn’t the anger at all, but something else, and Al knows this too, but no, that’s too—too much. Too scary, perhaps, it doesn’t get to have that name. But it manifests all the less, with an intensity that makes him almost sure when he says: “You’re not asking. It’s an offer.”

“I—thank you—I, I’m sorry, I’m such a mess and you don’t even—”

“It’s fine”, Al says, meaning it one hundred percent, and because the certainty of that scares even himself he adds: “I mean, have you met me? I’m the champion of being a mess.”

She blinks over at him, face red. “You’re not”, she says, which is a lie, but Al will let her get away with that.

* * *

“Are you up for walking? Cause it’s a bit of a way.”

She nods and Al starts to get up.

She follows suit. “Thank you.”, she says again.

Al doesn’t say that it’s nothing, or a given, or whatever, even if it feels like that.

“We’ll figure it out.”, he says again, instead.

They leave the shop. The outside feels even darker now, coming from the bright inside, the street both loud and quiet at the same time.

“I’ll just call Fawley to let him know we’re coming, alright?”

It takes him a moment to find Fawley’s contact. He feels weirdly watched, doing that, like he’s somehow getting it wrong, even though he manages to make the call without much of a hitch. It’s not that hard once you get a hang of it.

It rings at least ten times before Fawley picks up.

“Hello, Albus”, he says, “Which extremely terrible emergency can I save you from?”

Al groans. Fawley’s not really hiding that he’s making fun of Al’s initial reasoning behind buying the phones in the first place, and his insistence that they both carry them on their person all the time. There’s no real point in complaining, though, not when Fawley at least humours him about it.

“Remember Cath?”, he says.

Fawley makes an affirmative sound. “From the bar?”

“Yeah, from the Nightowl. She’s having a bit of an emergency.” Al gives her a sideway look. Cath’s looking right at him.

Al decides that they can give Fawley the details once they’re there, if she even wants to. If she doesn’t, Fawley will probably figure it out anyway, because that’s what he’s like, but there’s nothing Al can really do to prevent that.

“Is that why I got such a nice delivery on the table?”

Al makes a grimace. “It didn’t destroy any teacups, did it?”

“Almost destroyed my poor heart, but other than that, we’re fine.”

Al scoffs. “Your heart is fine, and you know it.”

Fawley makes another sound and Al can visualise the dismissive hand gesture that goes along with it. “So how are we helping?”

Al can’t help but smile at that. There’s a comfort in knowing how other people think, sometimes. There is also a comfort in knowing how kind they can be.

“She’s sleeping over for a bit, is that alright?”

It’s a rhetorical question, and they both know it.

“As long as you’re fine with it.” There’s a short pause. “I suppose you need me to do some redecorating?”

Al bites on his lip, but he’s relieved, too. He meant what he told Cath—they’ll figure it out. But it’s good to see that he actually can help, not just thinks he can.

“More like cleaning up”, he says, “But yes, please.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”, Fawley says, which means he’s going to get it done.

“Thank you”, Al says, “We should be there in”, he hesitates, trying to estimate the distance, “thirty minutes or so.”

“Anything else?”

Al bites down on his lip harder. There actually is one more thing, but he doesn’t really want Fawley to try and do that, even if he probably can. Al can, definitely, but it’s a little harder when Cath is around and not supposed to see.

“No”, he decides, “Just—” He hesitates for a moment, not really knowing how to phrase it, as always. “Just be careful, alright? Don’t exhaust yourself.”

Al can hear Fawley sigh on the other side of the line.

“Of course.” It’s that tone again that Fawley has, where Al isn’t really sure if he actually means what he’s saying, but not in the mean way. More like he’s being nice about it. Al doesn’t want to examine it too closely, so he doesn’t try to argue him on it. Not that he can, when they’re technically agreeing.

He’s about to hang up when Fawley speaks up again.

“Albus?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m proud of you.”

Al falls quiet. He doesn’t know what to say to that, except maybe _What for?_ but that doesn’t come out.

Instead he just nods, as if Fawley can see that. Then, the line goes dead.

Something heavy settles in Al’s chest like it does sometimes these days, heavy and inevitable. Al’s not sure if the thing is bad, necessarily, but he knows that it scares him a little.

Too many scary things today.

Al is abruptly thrown out of that line of thought when Cath says: “So we’re approved for sheltering stupid lesbians, then?”

“You’re not stupid”, he counters immediately and automatically, “But yeah. Like I said, it’s not a question.”

“Well”, Cath says, “Thanks again.”

“Again, no problem.”

They walk in silence for a bit and it feels quite long to Al, although it’s probably less than a minute, before he looks back over to her.

“Do you want to—you know, talk?”

She’s shaking her head. “Maybe later?”

Al nods. He of all people really gets not wanting to talk, even though he’s learned that it’s not always the most effective strategy to deal with things.

The silence folds out between them again, only interrupted by the sound of their feet on the wet asphalt and the usual city sounds. Really, it’s not all that silent, even though it feels like it is anyway, somehow.

“I just don’t get it!”, Cath breaks out. They’ve just turned one corner, not gotten far at all.

Al hums. She’s already talking over him anyway.

And she keeps talking, the entire way to the flat, in big upset terms and half-sentences and some things make sense and some don’t and Al listens to all of it.

She doesn’t talk about what happened, not really. She talks about Sally and how nice she was when she met her first and how happy they were and how happy Cath thought they were and the whole story of how they first started going out and some of it, Al’s heard already, but most of it he hasn’t.

He doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t leave space for him to, but there isn’t anything for him to say anyway. That’s not what this is.

By the time they’re reached the house, she’s almost out of breath.

Al takes his key out of his pocket wordlessly and lets them in.

“We’re on the third floor”, he says, but Cath knows that already, she’s been here before.

In the bright light of the stairwell she looks worse than in the dark of outside, her face redder, the tear lines on her face more obvious. Al clutches his knuckles.

This time, he doesn’t whistle or knock, just lets Cath in in front of him. Fawley knows they’re coming anyway.

“Hello!”, he calls loudly in the flat, mostly to announce their presence.

The familiar sounds of the flat tell him that Fawley’s in the kitchen and that’s where he leads Cath as soon as she’s gotten rid of her shoes. A quick glance around the art room tells Al that Fawley’s hidden their magic just like he said he would. Not that Al really doubted he would keep his word, but still. Mistakes happen and that would be an unpleasant one.

“Hello.”, Cath says. Her voice sounds raw from crying, still.

“Hello.” Fawley returns the greeting in exactly the same way, except that he’s visibly calmer. “Let’s get some tea, shall we?”

Al can’t help but smile. “I’ll just go fix up our couch, alright?”, he says, giving Fawley a weighted look.

Fawley nods, almost imperceptibly.

“C’mon then, girl. Tell an old man a little story.”

Al walks out the kitchen slowly and carefully, one ear on the sounds inside. He can’t quite hear what they’re saying, but it’s enough to read the tone. Still, he has to get to work.

Really, what he meant by ‘fixing up their couch’ was that he needed to summon one in the first place, and find space for it to be, because they don’t actually own one. That’s why he rushed Cath to the kitchen earlier—that way there’s less of a chance she’ll notice the sudden change.

It takes him almost twenty minutes to get it right—not the spell, that’s not the problem, that goes right into the kind of stuff Al is good at, but the surroundings. He has to move around their stuff in a way that doesn’t look too much like it’s been moved around and also not disturb any open projects. It’s lucky that they basically never have any issues with storage, due to the ability to just change the size of things (both rooms and objects, although Al and Fawley usually try to stick to the objects, considering this is a muggle house).

By the time he’s satisfied with the state of the art room (clean, but not tidy because that is simply not an option, but with a sofa that looks like it could have reasonably been there the whole time) and sneaks back into the kitchen, Cath looks like she feels a little better. She’s talking to Fawley, in the middle of telling him a little story of how she and her brother used to prank their mean neighbor on Halloween. 

Al decides there’s no good in interrupting that. He knows from experience how much just being around Fawley, drinking his stupid tea and talking about different things can help, so he’s not about to mess with that. He’s not exactly sure how it works, but Cath deserves to get her fill of it either way.

He starts dinner instead. Nothing fancy, just some pasta. He has an evening shift today, so he doesn’t have forever.

Which reminds him—

He pulls out his phone again. Second time he’s using that thing today, really must be a record or something.

He has to look through his old sketchbooks to find the number, but he finds it surprisingly quickly.

“I’m just going to call in sick for you, alright?”, Al says to Cath, before he presses the call button.

“What?”, Cath mouths, apparently very respectful of the notion that you’re supposed to be quiet while other people are on the phone.

“At the _Nightowl_ ”, Al clarifies, “I’m telling them that you’re not coming.”

The phone is on its second ring.

“No”, Cath says, “I can go—”

“Yeah”, Al says, “But you’re not doing well, and you’re exhausted, and I think you probably need some sleep.”

Cath looks like she wants to say something else, but that’s when the phone is suddenly answered.

“ _Nightowl_ office, Monica speaking, how can I help you?”

“Hi Monica, this is Al”, Al says, and suddenly feels a little awkward. He hasn’t thought about the exact phrasing he was going to use beforehand. “Al Potter”, he says, in case she might somehow mistake him.

“Yes?”, she says.

“I’m just calling to tell you that Cath isn’t feeling very well. She, uh, won’t be able to come in.”

“Alright”, Monica says, a little to slow for it to mean just that. But she doesn’t exactly sound disbelieving either, so—it’s probably fine.

“You are still coming, though?”

“Me?”, Al asks, stopping the weird swirly motion his hand has been doing, “Yeah, of course.”

“Alright, then.”, Monica says, “See you in a bit and tell Cath to get well soon.”

“I will”, Al promises, “See you.”

He presses the red button and puts the phone down.

“Seriously?”, Cath says. She sounds—well, not really mad. Resigned perhaps.

It still makes Al feel bad, all of a sudden. Maybe that was too much.

He doesn’t think it was wrong, because Cath definitely should rest, and he really does think it’s the only thing that makes sense, but—

Yeah, maybe it’s too much. Maybe he doesn’t—he doesn’t really have the right to do something like that, especially without asking.

But he still thinks he’s right. “I should have asked”, he says, “But really, I think it’s better like this. You never really get sick, anyway, you can take a sick day. And you know”, he adds, feeling a little desperate, “It helps.” 

And immediately questions the veracity of that statement. The only real frame of reference he has for this kind of scenario is his relationship with Felina, and he’s not even sure how exactly he got over that break-up. He just—well, he was kind of upset, and then, at some point he had other things to worry about. Is that how that is supposed to work? It doesn’t seem like it.

But going to work feeling terrible also doesn’t exactly serve to make one feel better, Al knows that. And he knows that sleeping is good, sometimes. It can give some clarity.

And Al has an inkling that Cath doesn’t really get enough sleep as it is, so—

“It helps a little”, he amends.

For a moment he thinks she’s going to argue, or worse, start to cry again, but she just shrugs.

“Alright, I guess.”

Al smiles, a little forcefully. “Have some pasta.”

They have some pasta.

* * *

After that, Al starts to get his things together for work.

Cath is still sitting on her seat in the kitchen, watching him walk around and pick up things. Fawley has apparently decided to keep her company, as he has moved his sketchbook to the kitchen.

“You should really try and get some sleep.”, Al says, as he rushes back in there to make sure he’s actually turned off the stove. He might have a bit of a paranoid streak. “You can have my bed.”

“Al.”, Cath says.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t take your bed.”

“Why not?”

“I’m already taking your flat. And your food. I can really sleep on the sofa.”

“Bed’s more comfortable.”, Al explains.

“And it’s yours. Which is why you should sleep there.”

Al shrugs. “Won’t sleep in it anyways, so what does it matter?”

Cath puts a her hand to her temple, like she’s checking her own temperature, except kind of to the right. “You… …won’t?”

“Oh”, Al says, realising that that isn’t something that she would know about him, “I don’t really sleep at nights.”

“Excuse me?”

Al smiles sheepishly. “Insomnia?”

“But you’re telling me to get some sleep? But you just… …don’t?”

“I do sleep!”, Al says, “Just not at night.”

Cath stares. “Why?”

“I don’t know, I’m weird and messed up.” He shrugs. “I kind of just work around it. Go to sleep at six a.m., wake up at two p.m.—in the end, it’s still eight hours of sleep.”

Cath is still looking at him, but somehow a little differently. “I guess so.”

“You really can just use the bed”, Al says, “Actually, you’d be doing me a favour. I’ll just be creeping around the art room all night, trying not to wake you up if you don’t.”

“Right”, Cath says.

It occurs to Al that this, even more than the stupid phone call, might be a little too much.

”Sorry, I don’t mean to be creepy, I just—it’s really not a problem. I promise I have clean bedsheets, too.”

Cath opens her mouth to say something, but she’s interrupted by the soft sound of Al’s watch as it starts to glow.

“What is that?”

Oops. Well, that’s one thing he’s forgotten about.

“My alarm”, Al says, hoping Cath finds a way to make sense of that without inferring the existence of magic, “I really have to get going.”

He gets up as fast as he can and leans back in the door frame.

“Bye, people, have a good night, call me if anything goes wrong.”

It’s what Al always says before he leaves, except usually Fawley is the only one around to hear it.

“Try not to poison the general public!”, Fawley replies.

Al sighs. He zeroes in on Cath again.

“Call me if—if Alistair has an emergency, alright?”

“Of course”, Cath says, perhaps more seriously than the banter really calls for.

“And like”, Al says, “You can call me, too, if you need anything.”

He rushes out before he can hear her reply.

* * *

Work is unremarkable that night, busy but not overly so, but then again, the evening shift is busier than the night one anyway.

Monica is jumping in for Cath herself like she sometimes does and there’s another bartender working, too, and Al makes some small talk with them like he always does, though not a lot.

He has stuff to process.

He gets home around one o’clock. Cath, thankfully, is asleep, but she hasn’t taken the bed.

Fair enough, Al supposes. There’s probably something uncomfortable about just sleeping in another person’s bed like that. Whatever way you put it, him and Cath aren’t actually that close when it comes down to it.

His suggestion was really purely based on practicality, but she can’t know that, can she? There are enough shitty people in the world, and if not shitty, slightly creepy is bad enough.

It does put Al in the position though where he’s not exactly sure if he’s allowed to turn on the light, though. He kind of needs it if he wants to paint, and boy, does he want to, but. Well. He shouldn’t really be waking her up. What is he supposed to do?

Al decides that standing in the middle of the art room, staring in the dark, is definitely the creepy option and therefore the opposite of what he’s going for.

“Cath?”, he tries, gently, voice just above a whisper.

No reaction.

“Cath?”, he tries again, but she doesn’t wake up. As far as Al can tell, she doesn’t even move.

Alright, then. He’ll just risk it.

His hand snakes up the wall carefully, going for the light switch. And—done.

Cath still doesn’t move.

Well, that’s settled then.

Al still tries to be quiet as he makes himself some food and pulls out his sketch book to start some warm-up doodles. 

The familiar motions calm him, like they always do. There really isn’t anything like it, it just takes away some of the mad energies that seem to eat at the back of his mind continuously, in a way that Al doesn’t usually notice, right up until he does.

It’s the same thing that never lets him go to sleep at a proper time. It’s not that he isn’t at all tired. He might be strange, but he isn’t wired that differently from other humans. Something about the night makes that mad energy in his brain louder, harder to ignore. Al sometimes thinks it’s not so much the dark as it is the solitude. Nighttime is a time to be alone, even if you are sleeping.

It’s not like he minds being alone, though, so maybe that theory is crap.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s been like this for quite some time and Al’s learned to deal with it.

At first it’s a little uncomfortable with Cath in the room, almost like the universe has sent him a reminder that the rest of the world still exist, even when it’s nighttime and Al is making art, because it doesn’t really care about that.

Then again, sleeping people aren’t really there, anyway, and after a bit, Al just kind of forgets about her presence.

He’s reminded of it quite rudely, when in the early hours of the morning—Al knows, because he’s starting to get tired—a loud cheery tone tears the silence of the morning apart.

Al startles, looking around the room to identify the source of the sound—it sounds like some kind of song, though not one he recognises. That’s when his gaze lands back on Cath.

She’s making some kind of groaning sound, before stretching out her hand somewhere in the air next to the sofa, as if she’s trying to reach for something.

She doesn’t find anything, obviously, because there’s nothing there except empty space, but somehow it takes her a few seconds to reach that observation. When she finally does, she sits up straight in bed(—well, on the sofa—), looking around.

The weird music is still there, and she leans down to the floor where her phone is laid and—oh, well, Al could have thought of that himself, really. It’s just an alarm.

She switches it off quickly.

“Morning.”, Al says, thinking it might be weird if he just kept looking without saying something.

She turns her head and blinks at him, legs sliding off the couch.

“Oh”, she says.

Al grimaces and has to suppress a yawn.

“Alright?”

She shakes her head like she expects her hair to fall off it if only she shakes hard enough. “Yeah”, she says anyway, “I just—I just—waking up in unfamiliar places, you know?”

Al nods.

She sits up properly, tucking her feet under her thighs, eyes wandering across the room.

It’s weird to see her there like that, more so in the early morning than it was last night, or even while she was asleep. He hasn’t ever seen her like this, tired, and not very guarded and slightly dishevelled. Not that she was overly composed when he picked her up yesterday—or does it still count as today when he hasn’t been asleep yet? Al doesn’t think he’ll ever figure that kind of thing out, truly.

Mornings are different though, somehow.

“How are you feeling?”, he asks, because that seems a better way to phrase it then “Are you okay?”

She shrugs and yawns. “I’m just remembering.”

Al has to yawn, too. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”, she says, but doesn’t elaborate. She stretches a little and gets up.

Fawley must have given her one of Al’s ancient sweaters to sleep in, along with some sweatpants, because she isn’t wearing the jeans and blouse from yesterday anymore. That would have been pretty uncomfortable.

Al sighs and looks at his clock. 5:30 am. How the night has gone.

He yawns again, and now he does feel the exhaustion in his bones. He really should get to bed.

Cath is plopping down on the sofa again.

“You’re up early”, Al comments, because it’s really damn early.

Cath shrugs. “Duty calls, I guess.”

Al frowns. “Classes don’t start that early, do they?” He wouldn’t really know, considering he’s never been to university, but it doesn’t seem quite right.

“No, no, I’ve got a few hours, just—usually I study, or have some essay to write or whatever. Do that in the mornings on the nights I don’t work.”

“Oh.”, Al says, and, after a pause: “So you’re gonna do that now?”

She shrugs. “Don’t have my stuff.”

“Oh.”, Al says again. He didn’t think of that.

She sighs. “It doesn’t really—well, it feels stupid now, anyway.”

“You’re not stupid.”, Al says. He feels like he might sound a bit like a broken record, but he says it anyway.

Cath straightens up. “Aren’t I though?”

She doesn’t give him a chance to answer.

“You know what she said when I caught her? She was lying there on our bed, still—” She presses her lips together. “Urgh, anyway, she said that she was wondering when I’d find out. She wasn’t even—”

Cath pauses and puts her hands in her face. “She was like, surprised that I was surprised. She straight up thought I already knew she was cheating on me.”

She looks at him, then right back at the floor.

Al is counting down from ten backwards. _They should invent some better strategies for getting rid of anger,_ he thinks, because this crap clearly isn’t working like it’s supposed to.

“Or that if I didn’t know, I should have at least expected it. Like it was my fault somehow, because—But I didn’t—I never would have thought—and then I walked the hell out of there, and I got my phone out and I realised that all my friends are her friends and the only person I talk to on a regular basis that hasn’t chosen her over me is—”

Her voice breaks and she looks at him, again.

“Is—?, he asks, unsure if he actually wants an answer.

“Well, you”, she says, eyes flicking back to the ground. “Obviously.”

“I’m not that bad”, Al says, lame attempt at a joke.

Cath huffs, so maybe it’s a success, but also not, because it’s not the kind of huff you do when you actually find something funny. It’s the sad kind. Then again, Cath has plenty reason to be sad.

“No”, she says, anyway, a little softer, “Of course. Just—you know.”

Al doesn’t actually know, but he nods anyway. It doesn’t really seem like the time to open a discussion about semantics, especially when he isn’t even sure what it is that he wants to know.

“Well”, he says, then pauses, “Do you feel comfortable with me saying something bad about them?”

“What?”

“Your friends. And her, especially, I guess.”

“I mean, I literally just told you that she cheated on me in the worst way ever and that literally everyone knew about it and didn’t find it important to tell me, so—I think we’ve already crossed that threshold.”

Al shrugs. “It’s not the same thing.”

“If you say so.”

“So”, Al asks, “Can I?”

Cath raises one eyebrow. “Be my guest, I suppose.”

“I think they’re all major assholes.”

A foreign sound comes out of Cath’s mouth. It sounds so different and scary that at first, Al doesn’t even recognise it for what it is.

She’s laughing. Kind of.

“Does that make you feel better?”, Al asks, after a few seconds.

She wheezes. “Not really.”

Al waits patiently for the hysteria to subside.

“I’m sorry”, she says, “I’m just—I’m all over the place.”

“That makes sense.”, Al says and can’t suppress another yawn any longer.

“You’re up early, too.”, Cath says.

Al grimaces. “Haven’t been to sleep yet.”

She gives him a look and he says: “I told you, I don’t really sleep at night.”

She folds her hands together. “I didn’t think you actually meant that.”

Al shrugs. “Well, yeah. I’ve just been creepily hanging out with your unconscious body for five hours.”

He should really invest in getting a filter for that mouth of his, he thinks, but Cath just smiles weakly.

“Get to sleep then, you maniac.”

Al yawns again, this time wider. “Just take—whatever”, he says, standing up, “There should be food in the kitchen and stuff in the bathroom—Alistair likes to sleep in, so don’t worry about him.”

Cath nods.

“Thank you”, she says again, heavy.

 _You don’t really need to say that,_ Al thinks, but that, too, seems like a lot, so he doesn’t say it.

He just shrugs instead and gets to bed. At this point, he feels he deserves it.

* * *

Al is halfway through his after-waking-up-routine, when he remembers about Cath.

It’s largely because, well, she isn’t there. He panics for a second before he realises that it’s the middle of the day, and, duh, she probably has stuff to do and places to be.

“Did you catch Cath this morning?”, he asks Fawley as he hands him a glass of water.

Fawley takes a sip before he answers. “No, she was already gone when I got up.”

Al hums noncommittally.

Fawley looks up anyway.

“Lighten up, boy. There’s only so much you can do for other people, sometimes.”

Al wants to sigh. Isn’t that true.

* * *

The early afternoon stretches, even as Al tries to get stuff done. It’s only three o’clock, when an owl comes in. Al, happy for the distraction from the mundane task he can’t focus on, anyway, gets up.

_Oh. Lucy._

Al wrinkles his forehead. It’s a nice surprise, for sure, but it has only been a few day since school started back up again and since they’ve seen each other. As honored as he is, he doesn’t think he’s usually that high up on her mailing list. It’s weird that she’s already writing him.

Oh well. It’s not like he’ll find out anything without opening the thing anyway.

He reads the letter and sighs.

He knows what he wants to do—which is to do something, it kind of itches in his fingers in a way that surprises him. Maybe it is because he already feels rest- and useless. Maybe on another day, he would reply with a sympathetic message and his best attempt at a pep talk.

He doesn’t want to, though.

He wants to find a solution.

That, really, is also an itch he knows, but he usually ignores it nowadays. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

_Except—_

Well, his brain is already working on it.

 _Is there any chance,_ he writes in his reply, _that you could meet me somewhere?_

* * *

Cath does come back to the flat a couple hours later, two big bags tucked under her arms.

Al hurries to help her when he lets her in, taking one of them.

“It’s fine, it’s fine!”, Cath calls.

Al takes the bag anyway.

“I just got some stuff”, Cath says, pulling on her jacket, “Just basics, pyjamas and some clothes and my things for uni and stuff.”

“Right”, Al says, “Did you—Ah, you know, you could have told me and I would have gone with you. For moral support or whatever.”

Cath’s grip tightens on the rim of the other bag. “It’s fine. I picked a time when I knew she wouldn’t be home, so—” She shrugs.

Al presses his eyelids together, fighting another wave of rage.

“Why can’t you just be the one that kicks her out?”

He feels like it’s a valid question, after all, Cath isn’t the one who did anything wrong.

“Can’t afford rent on my own, so I have to leave anyway.”

She looks back at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll get out of your hair as soon as I can, I’ve already looked—”

There’s a pang in Al’s chest. “That’s not what I meant at all! Just—I just think it’s unfair that you have to go when you didn’t even do anything.”

“I guess that’s just how it is—Hi, Alistair.”

Fawley is sitting behind the big easel again.

“What are you making?”, Cath asks, but Fawley is already covering it up.

“Oh”, Cath says, “sorry.”

“It’s the secret project”, Al says, “Don’t worry, I don’t even know what it is.”

Fawley just clucks his tongue. “Let’s have some tea.”

And they do.

* * *

“She hasn’t even called!”, Cath says, out of the blue, as they’re walking to the _Nightowl._ They have the night shift again today, together.

Cath went to take a nap beforehand, but Al isn’t really sure if she actually slept.

“Huh?”, he replies. He almost didn’t hear her, too lost in his own thoughts.

“I mean, she texted right after I left, and then again this morning, but that’s it! She must have noticed I was at home today, but she didn’t even have anything to say about that.”

Al isn’t sure what exactly texting is, but he feels like it isn’t the right time to ask. Cath is talking right now, and she hasn’t really talked today, except maybe at hell in the morning when Al was basically half-asleep. Al doesn’t want to ruin that, so he just makes an affirming sound to let her know he’s listening.

“Like, what does she think is happening here? I’m just gonna get over this and then we’ll be back to normal? That I need to cool down or something?”

She pauses.

Al doesn’t know what to say.

“I don’t need to cool down, Al. I’m being reasonable here.”

The way she says it, voice going up slightly so it sounds a bit hysterical, undermines her point a little, but Al agrees anyway.

“You are. If she thinks you’re overreacting, she’s—” He searches for a word, but he can’t find one that seems appropriate, one that is bad enough. “Screw her.”

Cath huffs. “Doesn’t seem like the solution to the problem there, does it.”

Al opens his mouth—

“I know that’s not what you meant, just—” She sighs. “Maybe that’s not it, anyway. Maybe she just doesn’t care.”

Her voice has gone down from hysterical to quiet, almost tired.

“What do you mean?”, Al asks, because that of all things doesn’t make any sense to him.

“You know, maybe she doesn’t think I’ll just come back to her anyway or whatever. Maybe she just doesn’t really care either way.”

“What do you mean?”, Al repeats, like a parrot, but this time, he means it even more than the last. It just doesn’t make any sense.

“I mean”, Cath says, slowly, “Maybe she just won’t miss me—doesn’t miss me.”

Al feels the actual bruise on his heart. But he can’t tell her she’s wrong, because he doesn’t know. Doesn’t know the situation, doesn’t know Sally, doesn’t know Cath all that well when it comes down to it.

“Well, then she’s an even bigger idiot for that than she already is for cheating on you.”

Cath shrugs. “Is she though? I mean, is she really? It’s not like I’m prime girlfriend material or anything.”

Al feels like his chest has been actually stabbed with a big, bloody knife.

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“No, honestly, I’m probably not. You know, I’m always busy, I basically need all of my time to work and study and sleep and eat, because—” She breaks off. “Anyway, I don’t have any money, so I need to work to get through uni, but I can’t afford to take extra time, so I have to do well in all my classes, and my mum—well, anyway. I never go out, I never do fun stuff, because whenever I catch a break, I just want some peace and quiet, and—and I’m not even the really romantic type anyway. Like, cuddling on the couch is more or less the best I can do, most of the time, and I’m not even that cuddly. And at that point—what’s really there to miss?”

Al swallows.

“Well”, he says, careful and measured, because this isn’t about him and his stupid sudden emotions, and he’s not going to make it about that, “I think you’re brilliant, and funny, and kind—and, and classy. And beautiful.”

Cath looks over at him. Her eyes are tired and sad, and Al thinks she looks a little like when he first met her, hair up, red lipstick, stupid name tag already pinned on her shirt. Except she doesn’t look the same at all, because Al knows more now, and he can decipher what those things mean, at least a little bit.

“Yeah, maybe”, she says, slowly, unconvinced, “But you’re not in love with me.”

“No”, Al says, quietly, “I’m not.”

He’s not. That wouldn’t be a kind thing to lie about. Besides, it’s not what she wants to hear, anyway.

 _But that doesn’t mean I don’t mean it._ The words are so visceral in his mind he can almost taste them on his tongue. He can’t bring himself to actually get them out.

It’s in the early hours of the morning, when the night folk has more or less cleared out, but nobody is in yet to get a coffee that they talk again. Talk about something other than drinks and the bar and the customers, that is.

They’re already setting up for the early shift, trying to make the transformation to something more like a café than a bar.

“Do you miss her?”, Al asks. He doesn’t mean to ask it, it’s slipped out more than anything, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that is appropriate to ask. It’s the kind of thing that should be left out of conversation discreetly to heal in the dark. But Al’s been thinking about their conversation the entire time, and somehow his thoughts are spilling out without his permission.

He almost wants to take it back, but that would just make it worse, wouldn’t it?

“Like, you wish she would miss you as much as you miss her?”

Yikes. That’s even worse.

It’s honest, though. Isn’t that the thing, though, in romance novels?

Al isn’t sure. He doesn’t read them all that often.

Cath, in any case, doesn’t seem upset. Or at least, not more upset than before, or all this time, which maybe isn’t that high of a bar to clear.

She sighs, again, deeply.

“I don’t even know. I feel like I’m just—for now I’m just mad at her. I haven’t really had time to miss her yet.”

“Oh.”, says Al, “I’m mad at her, too.”

It comes out like a revelation.

Cath looks back at him. “You don’t even know her.”, she says, voice all funny and distant.

“No.”, Al says, and tries to stop his eyes from watering. Luckily, the lighting is dim. “I’m sorry.”

“No, no”, Cath says, same funny voice, except it’s not really funny at all, just strange, just something in there Al doesn’t understand, “It’s good—good to talk.”

 _Yeah_ , Al thinks, _yeah, it is._

* * *

They keep talking.

Obviously they keep talking, because they live in a flat together that’s not all that big and strictly doesn’t have enough bedrooms, so it’s not like they were going to just stare into the same spaces and each other silently, of course, but that’s not it.

Not all of it is serious, either.

Some of it is Cath complaining about uni, or just telling Al about whatever she’s studying, which—he honestly isn’t sure why she bothers. He _tries_ to listen to her talk about human resources management techniques, but he inevitably zones out about ten seconds in. It’s not even on purpose. He just gets kind of lost in the motions of his hands.

“What’s that called?”, Cath asks suddenly, and Al’s still listening enough to catch that.

He looks down at his hand. “You mean the paint brand?”

“No, no”, she gestures, “The picture.”

“Oh.”

So that is also a thing.

Al’s not really used to painting self-consciously. In the literal sense of the word. He’s not used to being aware of himself like that while he does it. Or of what he’s doing. It just exists within the walls of the flat, or maybe his brain and Fawley’s, he supposes, but that doesn’t really count. It’s just that closed off space that doesn’t really seem to apply to the rest of the world.

There was Felina, of course, but everything that ever happened with her—that was a closed-off space, too, in a way. And everyone else who’s ever seen his work have just been strangers. It’s never been connected to him like that.

He’s never dealt with the idea of being seen in relation to it.

It’s strange.

The picture does have a name, though. All of them do, though it doesn’t really matter. He rarely even tells Fawley about them, it just doesn’t come up.

“Rage at Starbucks.”, he says, without thinking and looks back at his sketchbook, open to the draft of it. It’s taken him quite a bit of time to sort of decently sketch a booth from memory, but he hasn’t had the time to go and take another look or even a picture to check. Maybe that wouldn’t help anyway, because that’s not what the picture is about— _oh_.

Al looks back at Cath. He can feel his cheeks colour. This is awkward. He’s clearly putting her in an awkward position.

The look on her face isn’t uncomfortable, though, just surprised, then just—pleased, maybe.

“Oh.”, she says.

“Yeah”, Al replies, somewhat nonsensically.

“Cool”, she says, “I think it’s looking great.”

Al nods. He doesn’t really—know what to do with that. She’s being nice, probably, or talking about something that doesn’t have anything to do with how good Al actually is at doing art, not to mention that he’s barely just started, and even so, it’s not like Cath knows about art. It sounds a little mean, even to think, but it’s true. How would she even know if he was doing a good job or not?

This is why talking about art is weird.

So Al just asks her about how the hell people decide on who they hire again. It’s not like he knows he just supposes he managed to make Monica think he wasn’t a total weirdo. He hasn’t had to try since.

The question sets back Cath’s earlier question about twenty paces, but that’s fine. It’s all fine. At least they’re not talking about art anymore.

So there’s that, a little awkward art-talk, and a little incomprehensible study-talk, and more about daily business and schedules, and just chatter, really, but some of it is, well. Really Talking.

And they do a lot of it, more than Al is used to, frankly.

At first he thinks that’s just Cath, just what she’s like—not chatty, but like, communicative. Direct. Not the kind of person to beat about the bush and keep herself hidden.

But then he notices that she doesn’t do it when Fawley’s there, not in the same way. It doesn’t really make sense to Al. Fawley knows so much more about life and people than Al suspects he himself ever will, and besides, Fawley’s good at keeping secrets. And besides that, he’s just Fawley. He understands so much.

But Cath keeps talking to Al when they find themselves alone, walking to and from work when they have the same hours, or in the mornings when Al is just about to go to bed.

So maybe it’s not Cath.

Al doesn’t know what it is.

But he doesn’t—doesn’t mind, exactly, it’s kind of—well, he’s not used to it. But there’s something about it.

“I don’t think I can miss her.”, Cath says, the next day, once again unprompted.

Except it isn’t really unprompted, is it? It’s more like a conversation they never finished before.

“I mean”, Cath adds without waiting for a response, “it obviously wasn’t good in the first place, right? She lied to me and she obviously didn’t value our relationship at all, so—I don’t know. It’s not like I want that back. Nothing about that situation really warrants being missed, does it?”

“I guess so.”, Al says, because she’s right, of course. Obviously Cath shouldn’t want that girl back, or their relationship, but still—that seems a little radical. Not necessarily in a bad way—it’s just that Al can never get himself to think in extremes like that, even when it seems like he really should.

Then again, Al doesn’t really miss Felina either, not really. He thinks about her sometimes, and it makes him sad, sometimes, but that’s not the same thing as missing her. He kind of wishes things had gone differently—but more for her sake than his, and maybe a little bit for the what-if. But it doesn’t feel like she’s missing from his life, like she’s left an empty spot.

Maybe that’s just how things get, after a bit of time. Maybe Al’s just abnormal, but he doesn’t want to think about that.

But for Cath, it’s only been a few days. And even then, what she and Sally had, Al can tell by now, wasn’t like the fumbling, unarticulated thing between him and Felina. They were actually together for a long time. They lived together. It can’t really compare at all.

“I think it would be normal if you did.”, is what he settles for, “Even if it wasn’t what you thought it was.”

Cath pulls her legs up to her torso, securing her arms around them. “Yeah, maybe. I just keep thinking that I didn’t even know her at all. I never would have thought she could do something like that. It’s like I don’t even understand the first thing about everything that was going on with us, you know? I thought I had everything under control, but really—I was just an idiot. And that goes for everything I liked about her, too, you know? How do I know anything about it was real? How do I know she even liked me at all?”

Al sighs. He doesn’t have any answers. He really wishes he did.

“I don’t know. You could ask, her, perhaps?”

“But even then, she could just lie to me. Or, you know, laugh at me or something.”

Al stays quiet. His fury is back, but it’s all tangled up with sadness.

“You know what the worst part is?”

Al looks back up at her. “No?”

“I don’t feel at all like how I should. I’m not—I don’t think I’m heartbroken. I’m sad, and angry, and I feel stupid, but—I don’t know. Shouldn’t there be more?”

The sentiment hits Al right in the chest with how—correct it seems, for lack of a better word. It takes him a moment to answer. “I don’t know”, he says.

“It’s like it makes her right, a little.”

Al frowns. “It doesn’t.”

“No, but—if I’m not heartbroken about this, doesn’t that mean it wasn’t—like, doesn’t that mean things were wrong in the first place? Like, I didn’t care enough anyway? And all the other stuff, about me being busy and not going out with friends when she wanted and just studying all the time—I mean, doesn’t that mean she was right, in a way?”

Al takes a breath. “No, it doesn’t.” He turns his eyes to the ceiling, like the right words are going to be written on there. “Cheating is wrong, no matter what else was going on with you guys. And she could have always talked to you about it.”

This time it’s Cath who sighs, long and deep, in the way of a person who’s turned this over in her head too much already. “Remember how I told you that I’m always busy and never have time for anything? Especially talking?”

Al shrugs. “Well, you’re talking to me now.”

Cath looks him in the eyes, then back to her knees. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

* * *

Al doesn’t realise the owl is at the window at first. That’s weird, kind of, because like every other wizard he knows what an owl that wants inside sounds like. But it’s the middle of the night, and that’s generally not when owls come to people, because they’re smart enough too know that they’re unlikely to find anyone to let them in. Maybe after a long flight through a snowstorm. Or if they can’t reach anyone during the day.

_Oh._

Cath has been hanging out at the kitchen table all day, doing research for her thesis. Perhaps writing it, Al isn’t so sure. He generally doesn’t understand anything about it, and to be honest, it scares him a little.

But her continued presence—not that Al minds—could be the reason why an owl is knocking its beak on his window at one in the morning. Cath is a muggle, and smart owls also tend to avoid those—perhaps not if they know them well, but still. Secrecy is pretty deeply ingrained in Wizarding Society, even in their pos.t

Al, feeling slightly guilty, feeds the poor owl one of the owl cookies he keeps.

When he looks at the letter, he feels even more guilty.

Or not guilty, just… …weird.

There’s no sender’s address, but Al recognises Scorpius’ clean cursive anyway.

He hasn’t seen either of them, Rose or Scorpius, in a week. Usually, he would have already bothered Scorpius at work at least once, or come around to their flat, or at the very least caught them somewhere to make plans to hang out. Or they would have caught him.

Usually Al’s the one doing the catching, though. It’s just how it’s always been, ever since back when the two of them weren’t even friends yet. Also, Al is kind of hard to catch if he doesn’t want to be. His patterns don’t make any sense. If someone wants something from him, really, their best bet is sending him a letter.

Which they do, plenty, but not that plenty, because usually they just tell him stuff in person.

It’s just—Al’s been busy this week. More busy than usual, with Cath and all that. He just kind of—forgot. That’s probably bad.

He opens the letter, and his eyes fly to the date. Okay, at least it’s from today. Could be from this morning, but whatever.

It’s short.

In fact, it’s very short.

_Al,_   
_I need your advice. When do you have time to meet?  
Scorpius_

Al bites his lip.

At least it doesn’t sound like he’s mad. But it certainly sounds like something, and Al isn’t sure if he like that either.

He turns the piece of parchment around and considers it for a moment. Is there something specific he should be saying?

In the end he replies with a single line:

_I can meet you tomorrow for late lunch._

He considers adding something like _I hope you’re okay_ or _Don’t do anything stupid_ but in the end he leaves it like that.

* * *

The uneasiness of it stretches into his morning as he makes food for everyone when he gets up the next day. Cath is already immersed in something or the other on her computer and Fawley is sketching.

“I’m off to see Scorpius”, Al says, in his usual manner, “Call me if anything comes up, alright?”

Fawley looks up. “Does he need reassurance you didn’t suddenly fall victim to a sadistic painter who tortures his assistants?”

Al makes a face. “I’m sure that’s his greatest worry.”

He wonders if the words sound a little flat to Fawley, too, but the old man just shrugs. “Have fun.”

Cath, apparently buried in business law or something equally mysterious just makes a muffled hm-sound.

* * *

“I need you to talk me out of something.”, says Scorpius, literally the second Al walks.

Al—Al doesn’t sigh, but he kind of does on the inside. At least now he knows what kind of conversation this is.

“Wanna go somewhere else for this?”

They go somewhere else.

They go somewhere else, they buy some sandwiches and Scorpius tells Al what this is about.

“That’s—“, Al finds himself saying, “Shit. That’s radical.”

“I know”, Scorpius says, “I know, this’ll mess me up—they’re gonna—they’ll tear me to shreds, probably, but—it makes sense, right? I’m not imagining things.”

He doesn’t even inflect it, even though it is a question, kind of.

Al takes a deep breath. “Shit.”, he repeats, “I mean—it sounds logical to me, but what do I know about that stuff?”

Scorpius shrugs. “You know about muggles.”

“Yeah, but not like that. I know enough to blend in, not complicated stuff.”

“I know complicated stuff.”, says Scorpius.

“I know.”

Silence for a moment.

“I can’t do it”, says Scorpius, “things are so good right now. I actually like what I’m doing. They’re starting to pay me a decent wage even though I’m crippled and have an unpopular name. Rose is just starting to really get in at St. Mungo’s. People mostly leave my dad alone these days—they’ll tear me to shreds if I do it. They’ll dig up everything. They’ll bloody start writing about Rose’ hair and exam scores again.”

He looks at Al like he’s awaiting a blow.

“Yeah.”, Al says, because all of those things will happen, probably.

Scorpius keeps looking.

Al opens his arms. “Look, what do you want me to tell you?”

“You know. Talk me out of it. I told you.”

Al sighs. “You should know by now that I can’t talk you out of anything.”

Scorpius spreads his arms in a wide gesture, like he’s offended. “Not with that attitude you can’t.”

Al suppresses another sigh and wonders if that’s something Scorpius actually doesn’t know about himself or if he’s just in denial. “I can’t, period.”

There’s some irony there, isn’t there?

When Scorpius doesn’t budge, he adds: “Listen. You just presented me with all of the reasons why it’s a bad idea. I’m not gonna tell you you’re wrong, because you aren’t. It’s probably going to be bad in a lot of ways, for all the reasons you just said. But you don’t need me to tell you that, you already know that. And if you know all of that and still want to do it, well. How the hell am I supposed to stop you then?”

Scorpius lets out a breath, somehow sharp and slow at the same time. Al watches him as he covers his face with his hands, only to rip them right off again.

“You’re right. Of course you’re right.” His hands curl on the table. “Merlin, Al, what am I supposed to do?”

Al looks back at his friend, his best friend. Scorpius is probably one of the best people he’s ever known. He’s so kind and loyal and brave and smart. And, perhaps more importantly, he’s great. He was never going to have a quiet life, he probably should have known that.

In other words, Scorpius is all the things Al hasn’t ever even really tried to be, even if he probably should have. What in the world has equipped Al to answer that kind of question?

Nothing, probably, but he will, anyway.

“You do what you always do. You make a plan. You make sure you’re right. Get some advice—not from me, I don’t know crap about politics, someone who can actually tell you something. Get them on board if you can. Gather some support. Convince people because you’re right. Try to be prepared for the attacks, you know they’re coming. And then you do your thing. You know, stick to your guns and stuff.”

Al’s looking at his sandwich as he talks and when he’s done, he almost feels out of breath. He looks back up at Scorpius. There’s a strange look in his friend’s eye, so intense, but in a different way then before, a way that doesn’t have anything to do with overturning actual laws and making the world a better place. It’s more personal and Al suddenly can’t bear it.

“What does Rose think?”, he asks, and the look is gone, replaced by a different, sheepish one.

“Scorpius.”

Scorpius doesn’t say anything.

This time it’s Al who buries his head in his hands. “Okay, scratch what I just said. You have to talk to Rose. She’s your girlfriend, for Merlin’s sake. Besides, you literally just explained to me how it affects her, too.

“I know”, Scorpius says, “I just didn’t want to—well, I thought I probably won’t do it anyway, so what the point to—stress her out and stuff. She’s got enough on her plate.”

Al really doesn’t know how Scorpius keeps getting caught in those kinds of things. Sure, he has the best of intentions, but that kind of behaviour smells like disaster from ten miles away. Surely he must see that. And it’s always with Rose, too. Maybe it’s something about romantic relationships that makes people go stupid from time to time.

He thinks of Cath. Maybe that’s what happened to her and Sally, too. Not enough talking, and then someone started getting stupid. Too stupid.

He shakes the image out of his head. The situations don’t compare. Scorpius and Rose aren’t like them, they can’t be.

Besides, Scorpius has been like this with Rose even before they were together. Then again, they probably were in love by then.

In love. Such a strange concept.

“Hey”, Scorpius says into the silence of Al’s thoughts, so suddenly Al almost jumps, “What is it?”

“Huh? What?”

Scorpius gestures vaguely with one finger. “What’s up with you? Did something happen? You’re kind of off.”

“Oh”, Al says, “Uh, nothing special, really.”

He can’t tell Scorpius about Cath’s business. There’s not a definite ban on it, it’s not like she said he can’t talk about it. But it’s been sort of implied.

“Okay.”, Scorpius says, giving him a deliberative look, but he drops it, just like he always does.

“Anyway”, Al says, “Just talk to Rose. She needs to be prepared, and besides, you’re a team. You can’t do it without her. So, you know, be a good team member and talk it out. And don’t make assumptions to give her an easier time, that doesn’t work.”

Scorpius looks vaguely guilty. “I know, I know. It’s just—I’ll be making life hard for her again. How’s that fair?”

Al sighs. “You’re mostly making life hard for yourself, I think. And Rose…” He trails off, trying to find the right words. “You can’t help being yourself, you know. And you shouldn’t. Sure, you’re a lot, but so is everyone. I think it’s part of being a person. And it’s part of loving someone, too. Sometimes it’s a lot to take, but—well, it’s not like she doesn’t know what you’re like.”

He hesitates.

“Besides, they’ll probably write about her hair again anyway, as soon as they hit silly season.”

* * *

Al comes home feeling strangely drained, even though the day is only really just starting for him.

Fawley is quietly painting in the corner, so absorbed in his work that he barely greets Al when he comes in.

Cath’s sitting on the sofa backwards, looking out of the window into masses of grey and asphalt. There’s not a lot to see there, really, Al notes as he plops down next to her. The flat is great in many ways, but it doesn’t really score points for the view from the art room.

He looks back at Cath. It’s strange to see her like that, actually not doing anything for once, just sitting there, completely still, without her laptop, without notebooks or textbooks of markers or cocktail glasses. There’s something unsettling about it, and if it’s only the realisation that he’s barely ever seen her so still.

“What are you thinking about?”, he asks, quietly.

She shrugs, the movement so deliberate that it doesn’t look casual at all. “Just contemplating homosexuality.”

“Oh.”, Al says, suddenly stopped in his tracks, “I guess I can’t help with that.”

“Oh?” Cath turns over to him slightly, the movement shaking off the statue-like stillness.

Al suddenly feels like he’s said more than he actually has, like there was some kind of revelation in there somewhere and he didn’t even notice.

“I mean”, he says, a little awkwardly in the way he hasn’t felt in a while, “I wouldn’t know anything about that, would I?”

Cath frowns. “Really? Not at all?”

Al feels his fist open and close, trying to get rid of the tension that comes from—from being right on the edge of—something.

It’s not Cath’s fault, Al can tell that she’s—almost relaxed, at least by her standards. Casual, if a little curious, but—

“Cath.”, he says, and surprises himself with how grave he sounds, “What exactly are you asking me?”

Cath blinks, then her eyes go wide suddenly. She glances over at the kitchen door, where Fawley’s disappeared to to make some tea, now that Al’s back.

“Oh, shit”, she says hurriedly, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed, you don’t have to tell me anything, obviously.” She glances around nervously. “I won’t say anything, either.”

It’s an out. There isn’t even anything sneaky about it, it’s explicitly an out of a conversation that makes Al’s avoidance senses tingle.

He didn’t even know that this was a thing. A thing he didn’t want to talk about.

It makes sense in a way. The things Al doesn’t want to talk about are usually also the things he doesn’t want to think about, and the end up somewhere in the recesses of his mind, the places he knows are there but doesn’t like to look.

It also really doesn’t make sense. He didn’t even know this was a thing.

And it’s Cath. Cath, who’s told him so bloody much this week about her issues and insecurities. Cath who keeps talking to him like she knows him, keeps getting stuff right about him in small ways that take him by surprise because he doesn’t remember telling her.

It makes him want to talk, too. Be brave in a way he doesn’t usually bother to try to be.

“No”, he says, “I mean, really, what—what did you think—?”

He really doesn’t know how to ask.

It doesn’t matter.

Cath looks him in the eye. She looks—almost conflicted.

“I just figured”, she says, very softly, “that you—that you were queer, too, in some way.”

“Okay.”, Al says, the word lacking any kind of finality. That’s because he doesn’t know what he means by it.

“Listen”, Cath says, “I shouldn’t have said anything, that stuff—it’s vulnerable, and—I mean, I should know, it’s really—and it’s bad to assume either way” She shakes her head, struggling for words.

“It’s alright”, Al says, trying to stay on top of the strange buzz in his mind that seems to come from opening boxes even if they don’t forcibly spring open themselves, “I just—don’t really know, I guess.”

Cath jerks her head slightly. “You mean you’re—questioning?”, she says, voice hushed.

The way she words it makes it sound like it’s a whole thing. It might be, Al doesn’t know.

“Well, no”, he says, anyway, because ‘questioning’ sounds like something that involves a lot of thinking and examining, which is decidedly the opposite of what he’s been doing, which—“I’ve just never really thought about it, is all.”

“Oh”, Cath says, again, “Never?”

“No?”, Al says, but it comes out as a question, “How would I even know, anyway?”

Cath looks slightly overwhelmed. “Oh, okay, uh. There are lots of different things, really. Like, obviously being gay just means you like boys, but if you like girls, too, you could be bi, or pan, and there’s lots more—”

Al already feels like he’s getting a headache. “No”, he says, “I mean, how do you know in general?”

When Cath doesn’t seem to get the question, he elaborates: “Like, how do _you_ know that you like girls?”

Cath purses her lips. “Well, I guess the same way that straight girls know they like boys, I suppose.”

She sounds faintly annoyed. Al doesn’t get it.

“Well, how do they know that?”

Silence.

Al looks back up at Cath. Her face is etched with unmistakable confusion.

“I’m sorry”, he says, even though he’s not sure what for. It feels like they’re talking past each other, somehow.

“No, I just—didn’t expect that question, I guess.”

Al relaxes slightly. Except he’s still confused. “So, uh. How do you know?”

“Geez”, Cath says, “I guess people just kinda know?”

Al shrugs. “That’s not very helpful.”

“I mean, I basically just look at girls sometimes and think, ‘Wow, she’s really sexy!’ and then that’s that.”

“Really?”

“Well. Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“Any revelations about all the hot guys you’ve been looking at?”

Al shakes his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that.”

“Looked at a hot guy?”

Al makes a non-committal gesture. It’s what he means, sort of, but not—not completely.

“Oh.” Cath shrugs. “That’s fine, too, then.” She glances around one more time. “Sorry, if I’ve made you uncomfortable or anything. I don’t even really know why I thought that.”

Al shrugs. “It’s fine. It’s not really different from just assuming I’m straight, right?”

“I guess not.”

They sit there in silence for a little, just long enough for Al to wonder if Fawley somehow forgot how to operate the kettle with how long tea is taking.

“You’ve really never thought about it before?”, Cath asks, breaking the silence.

“No”, Al says.

“Wow.”

“Is that really that impressive?”

“No, yeah—I literally spent so much time thinking about this stuff—I was thinking about it right now, I couldn’t really imagine—”

Al shrugs. “I don’t know. Seems like pretty heavy stuff, so. Better to just not think about it.”

Cath shoots him an incredulous look. “How does that even work? Especially since it’s heavy stuff—that just kind of means you _have_ to think about it.”

Al huffs. “That’s like, the opposite of how I do literally anything in life.”

“You mean every time some ‘heavy stuff’ comes up, you just—don’t think about it?”

Al winces, but he still answers. “Pretty much.” It sounds kind of bad when she puts it like that, even to himself, so he amends it. “I mean, whenever I actually start thinking about stuff to hard, it usually goes to shit pretty much immediately, so—”

“Like how?”

“Like I start crying through my entire shift at work”, Al says without thinking.

“Oh.”, Cath says.

Yeah. That happened.

“Sorry about that.”

“Mate”, Cath says, “That sounds kinda unhealthy.”

Al shrugs. “I’m fine, though.”

“Alright”, Cath says, “If you’re sure.”

Al doesn’t say anything to that. He’s never sure about anything.

“Seriously”, Cath says, “I’m sorry though, I shouldn’t assume stuff. It’s not like you have to think that men are hot.”

“It’s fine, really”, Al says, “Let’s drink tea, alright?”

They get up and go to the kitchen and drink tea and Al tries not to feel different.

He’s never done that. Looked at hot guys. Looked at guys because they’re hot, or whatever. Never looked at anyone and thought they were hot. 

But he won’t think about that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and please tell me what you think! I'm excited to hear all about it!


	20. can we see beyond the scars (and make it to the dawn)?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everything moves, including Cath, Scorpius' plans and Al's life, whether he likes it or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually can't believe this story has twenty chapters now (It was never supposed to be so long, I *swear*). This chapter is on the shorter side, but I personally really like it. Looking forward to hearing what you think!

Al helps Cath move. He isn’t sure if it’s that she asked or that he offered, but it’s not-awkward in a way things have only just started to be—like they know now what the terms are, what things can be assumed without too much of a fuss.

It’s nice.

Well, it’s not really nice, because there is just something about getting all your stuff from your and your ex-girlfriend’s shared flat that doesn’t exactly radiate nice. Not that Al has any sort of experience with that scenario, but even he gets that.

Still, in the end, it almost feels anticlimactic. Cath picks a time when she’s sure Sally won’t be home, and they come with boxes and bags and a prepared list for what should go in them. A short and clinical end for something that’s supposed to be a big deal.

The list is kind of for Al’s benefit, because he doesn’t know about Cath’s stuff, but also kind of for Cath’s, because she clings to it like it’s a lifeline.

The list is very meticulous, with different categories, like clothes and books and toiletries and miscellaneous stuff.

Al puts himself on book duty, because it seems like that’s where he can mess up the least. He just kind off assumes that all the scary looking textbooks with titles he doesn’t understand are hers—easy enough. She also owns a lot of Young Adult novels. Al wonders if he could borrow some of them sometime.

He also gets the honour of packing together an array of semi-fancy markers and several notebooks that he doesn’t look at, while Cath folds her clothes.

They don’t talk much. It feels wrong to, like it would take away from the moment. Maybe this is a moment that should be taken away from, but it is what it is.

They manage to wrap it up in just under two hours. All in all, Cath doesn’t really own that much stuff.

Even Al, who lives in a tiny bedroom and only owns about ten pieces of clothing that he always wears, probably would need more storage than her. Well, if he couldn’t just shrink all his paintings when he’s done with them and then never look at them again, that is.

“Is that it?”, Al asks, staring at the pile.

Cath shrugs. “I reckon it’s enough to carry for the two of us.”

She’s right. They don’t have a car (or rather, Cath doesn’t have a car, Al doesn’t even know how to drive, he would be a disaster) and Al can’t just use magic like he usually would. Moving all this stuff, even like this, is going to be a pain.

“Yeah”, he says anyway, “It’s just—all the rest of that is Sally’s?”

He gestures around vaguely.

Cath crunches her nose. “I mean, this place was furnished, so most of it belongs to neither of us, technically—”

“Still”, Al says, unsure what he’s actually arguing about. He’s just—angry, really. Why does Cath have to be the one that leaves? Sure, it’s not like she wants to stay, really, and also, she can’t afford it, but still. It doesn’t feel fair.

“What about this?”, he says, opening up a random drawer in the kitchen. It’s full of an assortment of different pots. Al randomly pulls out a pan.

Cath looks at him, her eyebrows raised. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“It’s a good pan!”, Al says.

It is.

“I don’t cook that much, anyway.”, says Cath.

Al’s hand, pan still gripped tight, goes down. “I guess so.” He’s not sure what point he’s making anyway.

Cath is still looking at him.

“You know what?”, she asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer, “You keep it.”

Al blinks. “What?”

“If I want to take the good pan in the break-up, I’m going to take the pan. And if I want to gift it to my good friend Al, that isn’t any of Sally’s business.”

Al feels the smile growing on his face, even when if probably shouldn’t, but he looks back at Cath and she’s smiling, too. She hasn’t smiled much, today, it’s been all tired sighs and bitten lips. That makes sense, of course, but—well. This smile isn’t much happy, either, but it’s a smile, a little smug and a little vindicated, but a smile nonetheless.

“Alright”, Al says and throws the pan on top of everything else, “Let’s go, then.”

They fight their way downstairs with all the stuff in a couple of gos—because of course the flat is on the third floor. Still, eventually both Cath and Al and Cath’s things make it to the door.

“We definitely can’t carry all of this across town.”, Al declares. He wishes he could just magic it over to Cath’s new place, or at the very least make it weigh less, but it’s no good—Cath would definitely notice something like that and Al’s fresh out of excuses that aren’t literal magic, so. No can do.

A memory flicks into his mind of Felina and the clerk at the town hall, unwelcome as much as surprising. It feels like a million years away, even though it really isn’t. Either way, it makes him feel a little queasy. Al definitely won’t confound Cath. Back then, those were extreme circumstances, and yet—and he didn’t even know the guy. That probably shouldn’t matter, but it still does, somehow.

Cath sighs. “No.” She digs into her purse. “I swear to god, if Jack somehow messed up the time—”

She whips her phone out and taps on the screen a couple of times, too fast for Al to really grasp what she’s doing, exactly, though maybe he could if he understood how it worked at all—he can just about handle working his own phone and that looks very different from hers.

“Hey”, she says, quickly, almost business-like as she presses it to her ear, “Are you coming?”

There’s a pause and her face crunches up. “God, focus on the road, don’t talk to me, idiot. Yeah, love you, too.” She rolls her eyes and hangs up.

She looks back at Al.

“Everything alright?”; asks Al.

“Yeah, yeah, he’s just stuck in traffic.”

Al nods.

Cath takes a deep breath. Then another one.

“Hey”, Al says, putting a hand on her shoulder the same way Scorpius always does with him, “It’ll be alright.”

Cath looks back at him with tired eyes. “You sure?”

“Of course.”, Al says and he doesn’t even have to pretend, because it’s so obvious to him. “That other guy you’re rooming with now doesn’t seem like a douche, right? And even if he is, it doesn’t really matter, it’s just for a few months. Then you’ll graduate and then you can go wherever you want.”

Cath smiles grimly. “Not sure if things always work out like that.”

“They will, though”, Al says, “You had that internship, right? They want you, you said so, once you’re done with uni.”

Cath sighs. “It seemed like it, I suppose, but who’s to know—they might just tell that anybody and not follow up on it—“

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence, because behind them, the door to the building opens.

Al steps back to let the person pass him, but nobody comes. He meets Cath eyes almost on accident. They’re wide open.

It’s only now that he turns around and—oh.

He’s only seen her in pictures before and like all people she looks a little different in person, her expressions and stance a little off from how he expected, but still, it’s not hard to recognise her.

“Cath”, the girl says and smoothes a strand of her reddish-auburn hair behind her shoulder. The gesture could be flirtatious or nervous. Al really bloody hopes it’s nervous, for her sake if nothing else.

“We were just leaving.”, Cath says, managing to sound almost completely nonchalant. It’s fake, of course, but a good duplicate.

Al can basically feel the girl’s eyes glide over the scene—Cath, the small pile of bags next to her, Al.

“I see.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

“That’s it, then?”, she asks. Al doesn’t know her well enough to tell whether the question is rhetoric or genuine, but either way, it makes his blood boil.

“Well”, Cath says, quietly, “yeah.”

“Right”, the girl says, throwing her hair back, “Typical.”

It doesn’t make any sense to Al, but Cath narrows her eyes. “You cheated on me, Sal, what did you think I would do?”

The girl shrugs. She doesn’t even deny it or look embarrassed at all. “I kind of figured you’d care.”

“Well”, Cath says, still strangely calm, way calmer than Al could manage if he were to open his mouth right now, “this is me caring.”

Sally raises an eyebrow. “This is you drawing consequences. That’s not the same thing. You’re like a bloody robot, always working, always somewhere else, there’s nothing that ever gets to you in a way that matters. I thought this one would, one way or the other, but I guess I should have known.”

Cath’s eyes glitter. “Alright then.”, she says, voice cool, “I’m drawing consequences. I’m walking away like an icy bitch, you can tell Kelly and Joe all about that.”

She pulls up two of her bags and turns on her heel, head higher than Al’s ever seen. It’s impressive, honestly, to the point where Al might have stared after her, if there wasn’t the rest of the stuff to gather up.

Sally’s still standing there, watches him as he picks up the things.

“Where did she find you, anyway?”

Al doesn’t give her an answer, if she even wants one, anyway. He’s furious, but he doubts Cath would appreciate his losing his shit right there in the hall.

The girl sighs dramatically. “You’re wasting your time, anyway. She doesn’t even like boys.”

Al can’t help but snort at that. “I work with her. At the fricking bar. And if you can believe it, I’m aware. It just doesn’t particularly matter to me.” He pauses. “Also, fuck you.”

And with that, he walks out.

* * *

Outside, Cath is putting her bags in the trunk of a car. Her face is still expressionless, but her hands are shaking.

Al touches her shoulder, lightly.

She looks him in the eye.

“What an asshole,”, says Al.

Cath doesn’t say anything, but when Al gives her another box, she puts it in, and her hands are a little steadier.

* * *

“Hi”, Al says, nodding a little awkwardly as he slides into the backseat of the car. The driver meets his eye in the rear-view mirror.

He’s—he’s young, is Al’s first thought, seemingly too young to be driving a car. Except he isn’t, because he must be at least Lucy’s age, meaning that well, he isn’t.

Not that Al knows that much about cars. He’s been in one a couple of times, enough to know that he’s supposed to be wearing a seat belt, but not enough to not fumble with it before he can properly put it on.

“Hey.”, the guy says.

“Let’s get out of here.”, Cath breathes as she throws herself in the passenger’s seat and just like that, the car takes off.

“Are we in a hurry?”, the guy asks.

Al can’t see Cath’s expression, but her response must be evident in it.

“Did you—“, the guy starts, but his sentence breaks before he can ask a proper question, his eyes on Al again for a moment in the mirror, so quickly, Al almost misses it.

“We just ran into her on our way out.”, Cath says, no breaks pulled, “It was—well, I rather would have avoided it, really.”

Al can feel the guy looking at him again.

“Did she say anything to you—should I turn around and—”

“No!”, Cath says, loudly, then repeats it, more quietly, “No. You know I don’t like that kind of stuff. It’s not your job. It wasn’t that bad, anyway.”

Al can’t stop himself. “Yeah, it was.”

Now the guy is really looking at him, there’s no mistaking it. Cath sees it, too.

“Look at the road, idiot”, she says, “We have to turn left there.”

“Did she say anything more to you after I left?”, Cath asks Al.

“Just barely. You know that thing people do where they have some sort of shitty quality and then they assume everyone else is just the same? She was kinda—well, yeah.” Al shudders. The thought of the exchange still fills him with disgust almost as much as rage. “It was just some bullshit about where you found me and how I shouldn’t waste my time because you aren’t gonna sleep with me anyway.”

He bristles.

“Oh.”, Cath says. Then: “What the fuck?”

“Better not to think about it too hard”, says Al, “Like I said—shitty humans think their way of thinking is somehow universal.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to turn around—” Jack switches gears and makes the turns right, as per Cath’s instructions.

“I’m sure.”, Cath says.

“It would be, like, fulfilling my brotherly duties—“

“You better fulfill your brotherly duties by studying and not flunking out of uni in your first term, alright?”

The boy groans. “You’re my sister, not my mum, Cath—”

Al thinks of James and can’t help but stifle a laugh.

“See”, the boy says, “He agrees with me.”

“Oh, I was just thinking of my brother”, Al explains.

“Does he fulfill his brotherly duties of studying hard?”, Cath asks categorically, as if it’ll somehow help her make a point.

“Erm”, Al says, thinking again of James’ general… …Jamesness, “Not really. But he’s older, anyway, so maybe the rules are different.”

“Didn’t even know you had a brother”, she comments.

“I have a sister, too, she’s younger than me”, Al says, without thinking, “They’re not really in the country, though, so—”

“…so you get to hang out with Alistair.”, Cath says, which really doesn’t seem like a logical conclusion to that sentence. Al’s pretty sure that even if his siblings were in London full-time, he’d still live with Alistair in the exact same arrangement as he does now.

“He’s the guy with the tea?”, the boy asks, unexpectedly.

“Uh, yeah”, says Al, because that’s certainly a way to describe Fawley.

“And you get to be his emergency contact.”

That also is true, so Al just nods, even though that is a bizarre way to describe their relationship. He wonders what Cath’s told her brother about him.

“Tough shit.”, says the guy.

Al isn’t entirely sure what he’s talking about. He also isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to say.

He doesn’t have to figure it out.

“Oh yeah”, says Cath, “That’s Al. Sorry, I suppose I forgot to introduce you.” She shifts her attention back to Al. “That’s my little brother, Jack.”

“Nice to meet you”, says Al.

“Likewise”, returns Jack and proceeds to curse at the oncoming traffic.

“Watch out, there’s a light!”, Cath exclaims all of a sudden.

“Jesus, Cath, I know how to drive.”

“Sure”, Cath replies, like she doesn’t quite believe it, although she must, considering she’s currently in a car with him.

Al stays quiet and leaves them to squabble. It’s kind of nice how much they genuinely seem to like each other. That keeps him from finding it too annoying.

Eventually though, they do arrive.

Jack helps them carry the stuff upstairs, but he can’t really stay, mostly because the car isn’t strictly allowed to park where it’s currently standing, but also because of something else Cath is nagging him about. It’s honestly a bit too much for Al to keep track of.

“Thanks for driving us.”, says Cath.

“Thank Lee for letting me borrow his car.”, Jack replies.

It’s startling how much he talks like Cath, with the words he uses just as much as with his inflections. And Cath, talking to him, almost sounds more like Cath than usual, even though that doesn’t really make any sense.

“Yeah”, Cath says, “Tell him for me—”

She gets out a key and fumbles with it a little awkwardly, in the way you do when you’re not used to the shape of it and how it fits into the lock.

She starts turning it, but stops before the door fully unlocks.

She turns around and throws her arms around Jack.

Al turns away a bit while they say good-bye. He doesn’t want to be an intruder.

* * *

The flat is not quite dark as they walk in, but almost. Cath turns on the light in the hall, and it seems almost comically bright in contrast to the looming darkness with the occasional sunbeam managing to get through the blinders.

Al and Cath pull her stuff through the door into the small hall of the flat.

Cath takes a breath and opens the door to the lounge. Al stays a pace behind her.

“Hi.”, she says loudly.

There’s a shape on the couch, just visible in the dimmed colours, that replies. “Hello.”

“I just wanted to tell you I’m here now”, says Cath.

“Consider me informed.”, says the voice, distinctly male, and also distinctly the kind of arrogant tone that makes Al instantly think of gossip magazine reporters that only pretend not to care about your dad’s favourite breakfast food. Needless to say, it’s not what he considers pleasant.

“Great!”, Cath replies in that cheery tone she usually reserves for their creepier customers at the _Nightowl._

Contrary to most of them, though, this guy seems to be able to decode the nuance, or perhaps he gets up for some other reason, but in either case, he moves from the dark couch into a the strip of light that comes in from the hall where Cath opened the door.

He’s lanky and thin, taller than both Al and Cath, but he still doesn’t exactly make for an intimidating figure. He just looks a little unhealthy, the kind of person that neither sleeps nor goes outside a lot at times when there is any significant amount of sunlight.

There’s something about that that unsettles Al deeply, but he can’t quite place it in the moment.

He looks at Cath in assessment, also a little like the creepy guys at the bar, except a little more condescendingly, maybe. Then his eyes flickers over to Al and he crunches his eyebrows together, clearly displeased. Well, even more than before, in any case.

“Boyfriend?”, he asks. He asks in the same way a particularly unpleasant person might ask you about your yeast infection.

“Friend.”, Cath says. She doesn’t add a just in front of it.

The guy doesn’t look convinced.

“We covered this in our interview, Carl”, Cath says, “No boyfriend, and there won’t be one any time soon, so you don’t have to” She raises her eyebrows. “withdraw from out agreement.”

She doesn’t make air quotes, but Al can hear them anyway.

“I’m just here to help move.”, Al says, “You’ll never have to see me again.”

This seems to satisfy Carl somehow. “As long as you still agree to the rules”, he drawls, “I am sure we will have a pleasant time co-habitating.”

Cath nods and turns around back to her bags.

Al takes it as his cue that the conversation is over. Thank Merlin.

They bring Cath’s stuff in her new room.

It’s pretty blank, but there’s a wardrobe and a bed and now there’s also Cath’s stuff.

“He seems… …pretty strange.”, Al says.

Cath plops down next to him.

“I guess.”

The scepticism must be written all over Al’s face because she elaborates. “Well, apparently he’s pretty antisocial and just, you know, generally a bit of a dick. But he’s also made it pretty clear that he’s not really interested in interacting with other people, so that’s not that big of a deal. Besides, he’s clean and he likes peace and quiet, so as long as I stay out of his business and leave his food alone, I think I’ll be fine. Really, it’s a good arrangement.”

To Al, it sounds incredibly lonely and detached more than anything else, but that’s not a helpful thing to say, so he just shrugs. “If you think so.”

Cath shrugs. “I know how to hold my ground. And besides, it’s not forever, yeah? I’m just my thesis away from being done with all of this. Uni and everything else—it’s not that long anymore.”

“Yeah.”, says Al. He doesn’t know what else to say. There’s possibly nothing she’s ever said he’s related less to.

Cath sighs, with the kind of finality that makes Al think he should leave. He doesn’t, though, doesn’t start saying good-bye so he can walk around London feeling weird (what a shame that it isn’t dark outside, really), because there’s something that’s haunted his mind in between all the talking, something he hasn’t said yet. And he thinks that maybe he shouldn’t, because it’ll be llame and maybe too late, but well—he reckons it might be worth it sounding a bit like an idiot.

“You know”, he starts, “just for the record, I think you’re wrong. About—“ He hesitates again, because it sounds so stupid out loud, at least when Al’s the one saying it, like he has any kind of right talking about those kinds of things. But he’s already committed to it. “When you said that you were a bad girlfriend, because”—he rushes, now, otherwise he won’t get it out at all—“you’re a good friend and a good person and you try really hard and I can’t really think of anything else that you could do to—be good. At that.”

He looks up, somehow scared that he’s offended her terribly.

Cath just stares into the distance for a moment, before she says: “I don’t know. Maybe, I—” She stops herself, and smiles back at him tiredly. “Thank you, though.”

* * *

Going back home feels to still and too restless at the same time. Al’s kind of gotten used to having Cath around, even if it’s only been, like, two weeks or something, and it really wasn’t the best of all arrangements, because they didn’t technically have enough beds for everyone and there was also the small issue of hiding all magic in a flat with two wizards that aren’t that used to doing that. Even so. It feels strange now.

But maybe that’s just Al, because with Al, everything always feels strange for one reason or the other. Most days he isn’t even sure if he’s really feeling strange or if by now, he’s just paranoid and imagining things. That’s the point, where, at the very latest, he stops thinking about it, because that’s just too complicated.

He just starts doing stuff instead, and, lucky for him, he has plenty of stuff to do.

With the reduced owl-frequency at their flat, also induced by Cath’s stay, he has mail to catch up to, both for him and for Fawley, and there’s always something to clean, and he should really go see Rose and Scorpius, because big changes are ahead, somehow, and even if they weren’t—well, apparently he has regained the capacity to feel guilty over things he doesn’t fully understand about himself.

He also kind of has the urge to wander through the dark city for hours and hours without aim or goal, but he tries not to do that as much anymore, not when he’s in this state of mind. It makes things worse more often than better he’s found, and he simply can’t afford to float from reality so far anymore, it’s not really fair to anyone. He has to take care of himself instead.

And really, there’s enough to do.

He fills the rest of the day with house chores and paperwork, puts out another newspaper ad for Fawley’s portrait commission and when they ask, he gives them his phone number, because why the hell not? It’s actually a lot less shady then just giving out the address. But they don’t ever get a lot of work that way anyway. Al suspects it’s because you’d have to be quite bored to actually read newspaper ads. He idly wonders if there would be a better way to do it, with the internet perhaps, but frankly, his understanding of it is way too limited to actually achieve anything. He could ask Lily sometime, when she’s back home. She knows about that stuff.

He moves on and finds Lucy’s reply to his last letter. Oh well. Looks like he’ll be busy this weekend at least.

He writes a quick reply.

Against his best efforts, by ten o’clock, he’s more or less done with everything that can be done in a day and the nervous energy still isn’t gone. Fawley’s gone to bed a couple hours ago, early for him, but it’s become more common recently, so Al can’t even use his company to calm his mind.

He doesn’t even have to go to work today.

He sighs and throws over his coat. He’ll take his camera at least.

* * *

The _Hogshead_ is filled to the brim.

Well, it isn’t really, because that would probably be against the rules imposed by the universe, but still. Considering it’s the frigging Hogshead, it’s pretty much packing.

See, the way the _Hogshead_ is supposed to work is that there are the same three to ten weird people that always go there and then a couple more that have stumbled in or find the _Three Broomsticks_ too full or that got lost somewhere. That’s it.

That’s what makes it a good place to study, as bizarre as it sounds. There is plenty of space, no noise, usually, and really, the three to ten weird people are all quite nice when you overlook some of their stranger features, which—it’s not like Al’s normal, exactly. At least they’re usually not the kind to read gossip magazines, which makes anyone instantly more likeable in Al’s opinion.

In any case, that’s what Al is expecting when he enters the Hogshead Saturday afternoon. It isn’t what he finds.

“Good seeing you, Al!”

Al is still staring when the greeting reaches him.

He looks up at the person behind the bar.

He hasn’t been here in quite a while, hasn’t really had a reason to come since he left Hogwarts, more or less, but he’s heard through the grapevine that Mirasol took over. Maybe Scorpius told him? Al doesn’t think that he keeps up with her, but it seems possible.

“Hi.”, he says, giving her a sheepish grin, “What’s going on here?”

She raises her eyebrows, like he should know more about it then he does.

“Hogwarts students, the lot of them. What can I get you?”

Al orders a butterbeer.

By the time he holds it in his hands, Lucy’s already spotted him and is waving from the corner where she and—Al struggles to call them her friends, because they can’t all be, right?—are sitting.

Al sighs and makes his way over.

Roughly fifteen or so seventeen-year-olds are staring at him. Just what he needs.

“Hey, Luce.”, he says, hoping his tone communicates how absolutely thrown in the deep end he feels.

Lucy smiles at him angelically. “I brought the rest of the class.”

“The entire rest of the class?”, Al asks.

The teenagers are still looking at him. Al’s aware that he isn’t exactly an impressive figure—he’s tiny, smaller than most of them, always has been, and there are the perpetual shadows under his eyes that decidedly don’t come from make-up, and besides, he’s wearing the muggle clothes he always wears, plain and comfortable, because what is the point, really, but still. Staring like that’s just rude.

“Not the entire rest of the class.”, Lucy amends.

Al sighs.

There’s about three seconds of time where he gets to decide how he feels about this. He decides that he doesn’t care. If half the bloody NEWT transfiguration class wants his help rather than Lucy and like, three friends of hers, that’s fine, too. It’s not like the material changes. Al can still shake that out from under his belt. And if they want to be judgemental of him, well, that doesn’t matter in any way, shape or form, does it?

“Sure, fine, whatever. Let’s get this started.”

Lucy beams.

“Okay, everyone!”, she exclaims, “This is my cousin Al, he’s a genius and he’ll help us!”

Al regrets everything. “Don’t oversell me.”, he grumbles.

“Al as in, Albus Potter?”, one of the girls asks.

Al was wrong before. Now, though, he really regrets everything.

“That is my name, yes”, he replies, figuring he might as well get that part over, “Please don’t ask me about gossip stories, they’re all false and it’s a waste of every one’s time.”

He sits his butt and his butterbeer down and pulls out his old transfiguration textbook from his bag.

“What is the problem?”

As it turns out, there are a lot of problems. So many in fact, that Al kind of wonders how some of these people passed their OWLs actually.

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit unfair. None of them are terrible. Some are good, even. Mostly, they’re just inconsistent, and Al finds himself coming back to Gamp’s formula multiple times even though that’s the basis of literally everything in transfiguration.

At times, he stumbles over his words a little, not so much because he doesn’t know the solutions, but because he doesn’t know how to phrase them, say them in a way that makes sense outside of his head.

He doesn’t know if what he’s saying is actually really helping any, but three hours later, as the students are gearing up to leave, Lucy hugs him tightly and asks him to come back again soon. Al, a little stunned, agrees, because really, this isn’t what he expected, but why the hell not?

“Couldn’t have tutored our class like that when we were doing NEWTs?”, Mirasol asks him when he asks her for the floo powder, lest he get in range of a mobile phone tower again. He didn’t plan for this to take so long, and the idea that Fawley wouldn’t be able to get a hold of him makes him nervous, maybe even more so than it used to, if that is even possible.

He shrugs at her, trying not to be impolite, even though he really doesn’t want to chat with her, nice as she is.

“Never came up, did it? Besides, it’s not like I have any qualifications.”

She shakes her head slightly, smirking at him. “I forgot what you’re like.”

Al doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just shrugs.

“Well, take care.”

“You too, hope to see you around sometime soon.”

He nods in reply before he grabs the green powder and hurriedly steps into the fire. He has to get home.

Somehow, he always has to go home.

* * *

Al meets Scorpius and Rose on Monday. It’s weird, because it’s a whole proper thing in a way it usually isn’t, not with them, because usually Al just shows up at their flat or their respective place of employment to force them to spend time with him. Recently he hasn’t. Maybe that makes it weird, or maybe that’s just in Al’s head, because he feels guilty about stuff like that.

This is different either way, because it isn’t hanging out, or playing games, or talking, or any of those things. This is a meeting. This is preparation.

Scorpius isn’t pacing, because that’s a lot harder when you rely on crutches to walk, but he looks like he’d really like to. He used to, Al is suddenly reminded, back when they were still teenagers and Scorpius legs didn’t give out underneath him.

“Calm down, darling.”, Rose says, voice simultaneously soft and very hard.

Scorpius tapping feet still. “Yeah, right, I’m sorry.” He gestures around widely, in a way that doesn’t really make sense. “Let’s get this started, then.”

Rose nods solemnly. “War council.”

For a second, nothing happens.

They’ve had war councils before, as silly as it sounds. The word was perhaps more appropriate then than it is now, with legitimate threat and danger to them, sometimes of unknown proportions. This time, it’s not like that. Also, this time, it’s just the three of them. None of them knows how to start it.

Al, suddenly impatient, whips out his wand and summons the board, letting it hover in the air in front of them.

Rose looks at him flatly, the tension broken. “Really?”, she asks.

Al shrugs. “You love a good board, don’t pretend. Let’s get this over with, yeah?”

Rose gets out her chalk and starts to write.

_Pros and Cons of Scorpius changing_

She stops and turns around. “What are those laws even called?”

Scorpius laughs nervously. “It’s really rather a lot of different ones.”

“Okay”, says Rose and turns back to the board.

 _Muggle and Wizard Relations_ , she writes down.

“It can be a working title.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading and caring about this ridiculous story. Can't wait to hear your thoughts!


	21. we do it all, everything (on our own)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al has too many things to try for. Sometimes he gets it right, sometimes he doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter again! Yay! Not the happiest with the pacing, but it could be a lot worse.  
> (There are also too many Scorbus vibes in this, why am I doing this)

Al is trying to be a good friend, he really is.

But. His head hurts and he’s caught himself zoning out three times in the last five minutes. They’ve been sat here for hours. He has limits.

“Stop it!”, he says, almost too abruptly.

Scorpius stops in his tracks, middle of hand gesture and all. “What?”

He looks like he’s forgotten that Al’s even there, which is mildly insulting, considering it’s Scorpius who insists that he is, but. Well. Al’s pretty sure he hasn’t actually said anything in about an hour or so, so perhaps it’s a little bit justified.

Al sighs.

“Listen”, he says, unsure how to phrase what he means to Scorpius in actual words, when it’s abundantly clear to Al, “We’re not getting anywhere here.”

Scorpius’ hand drops and Al only has to glance at the tiny shifts in his face to realise that this was the wrong way of going about it.

“No, no”, he says, hurriedly, “I just mean—It’s been a month, Scorpius. We’ve had just about a million of these meetings. I really don’t know what they can possibly still achieve.”

Scorpius’ eyes flicker over the sofa and the bookshelf behind it, like the answers are there. They might be, actually, Scorpius and Rose own a disgusting number of books on History of Magic. They are probably more helpful to this discussion than anything Al can contribute.

“But I still don’t—”, Scorpius starts, but he doesn’t finish the sentence.

Rose is fiddling with the chalk, not saying anything. She won’t, either. She’s too patient sometimes, Al thinks, at least when it’s like this, when Scorpius holds onto both of them and his obsessions like they’re lifelines.

“Scorpius”, Al says and he only says it because his head hurts and he is exhausted and he can’t hear anymore about muggleborns being estranged from their families and all the parents that don’t want to send their kids to school thousands of miles away for something they don’t even understand, because will they have a proper education? and yes, they will, but also, as Scorpius so eloquently puts it, they _won’t._

Al isn’t even sure what that means. Maybe that makes him an ignorant asshole, but he never claimed to be smart about that kind of thing.

“I support you and everything and I think that you’re trying to do a good thing, even if it will be hard. But—I don’t know anything about how to be a politician, or children, or muggleborns. I don’t know how I can even still help you with this.”

It’s quiet for a moment.

“That’s just—how we do things, though”, Scorpius says, sounding thoroughly lost, “War council. Figure it out.”

It is. It has been. It used to be more of them, at Hogwarts, with all kinds of problems. In fact, it’s Rose and Al that introduced Scorpius to the concept of it. Banding together, drawing up their strategy against the rest of the world. It’s not—even now, Al thinks that it’s a good way to do things, especially if your name is Weasley or Potter.

Scorpius has needed both Al and his obsessions like lifelines, back in Sixth Year. But this isn’t war. This is just life.

“Well”, Al says, “Yeah, but—” He rubs his palms against his eyeballs. The words are there on his tongue, right what he’s thinking, but something stops him. “This isn’t going anywhere”, he repeats instead, “can’t you see that—and I—” He falters. “I think this is too important to you to not go anywhere.”

Al glances over to Rose again.

She’s biting her lip, but she doesn’t say anything, neither to agree with Al nor to argue with him. 

Scorpius isn’t looking at wither of them, focusing on the bookcase behind them instead.

Al, of course, kind of knows that what he’s saying, the things like politics and how you make an argument and who you convince isn’t why Scorpius is going over all of this with him for the thousandth time. He knows that Scorpius knows that, too. He knows that there are different reasons that are complicated and scary and have the potential to hurt. But he’s so bloody tired and everything hurts and there are a million things he’s trying not to think about and—maybe he could give some passable advice here, if he thought about it really hard, and had good control over his brain and his mouth and his emotions and his exhaustion most of all, not about bloody politics, but about being Scorpius and being brave, but right now, he just—can’t.

“I love you”, he says, “But I can’t help you here like this, just”—he shrugs, helplessly—“You need to find someone who can.”

Scorpius is looking at him, now. Rose still is, too.

Al suddenly feels naked under their gazes in a way he usually doesn’t with them, and he wonders if he revealed something he didn’t mean to, a hidden meaning to his words that isn’t apparent to him, but he ‘s too tired for that. He’s too tired for all of this. He just wants to go home.

He glances at the clock that’s hung on Rose and Scorpius’ wall.

“I need to—I still have work today, and I need to—“, he sighs, silently adding up the walking times in a way that doesn’t really take any power from his brain anymore. “I need to go, really.”

Neither of his friends look especially happy about it, and Al—he kind of gets it, really, this isn’t—finished, in any way, shape or form, but he just doesn’t have the energy. Someone else has to be understanding today. 

“I’ll see you—I’ll come see you guys tomorrow, alright?”

* * *

“You seem tired”, Cath says, when he gets in to work.

Al nods. He is. He is so bloody tired, and—if it even is being tired, but he’s not going there.

He has the weird urge to tell her all about it, to spill Scorpius’ plans all over her, and Fawley, and everything else, even if he doesn’t really know what that everything else is. But he can’t think of a way to do that without breaking a million laws that Scorpius is currently fiddling with and possibly endangering the entire wizarding community.

So he doesn’t.

He sighs instead, and doesn’t find an ounce of relief in that.

* * *

The next day is a Saturday, meaning that, as Al conveniently forgot the night before, he actually has a prior commitment that keeps him from going to Rose and Scorpius’ flat and solving whatever damage he did to—well, he doesn’t even really know—right then.

Al isn’t sure if he’s annoyed or relieved.

It also means that he can’t drop off his phone with Rose before he goes, meaning that—alright, Al has dropped in the who-gives-a-crap territory of crisis management.

“Fancy a visit to Hogsmeade?”, he asks Fawley.

He doesn’t really care if Fawley says yes to do him a favour or because he actually wants to, he’s just kind of glad that he does.

* * *

Fawley and Al are early today, which is nice, because it gives him a little time to sort his thoughts out and what he’ll probably practice today.

Unless McGonagall has changed the order of her lesson plan, they should be getting to summoning things. They’re considered one of the hardest things in Transfiguration, which is why it’s only done in Seventh Year, but Al has always had an easy time with them, they just make sense to him. That makes it harder to explain to other people, though. He’ll have to figure out something about that, but it’s not an unsolvable problem.

Not an unsolvable problem.

Nothing about Transfiguration is, ever, even if the students seem to think so.

Al is almost surprised with how well the tutoring sessions seem are going. Well, at least he thinks so. He’s not sure if he’s actually as successful as he thinks he is, it’s not like he can look into anyone’s brain. But it seems to him like they’re mostly satisfied, even the couple of rude boys that showed up to the second session, mouthing off about who Al is supposed to be that he knows anything to tell them about Transfiguration.

Which—that’s kind of fair, he supposes, he’s not a teacher, or a scholar. But he _does_ actually have a NEWT in Transfiguration, and he knows how to do the allegedly impossible tasks McGonagall is setting them. And besides, nobody is forcing them to come.

That’s what he tells them, too, a little too dry and a little too loud and he only realises when he’s already said it. But after a short moment of mortification, of _What the hell am I thinking?_ he is surprised to find them quietly apologising. They stay around for the lesson, though, and even come again the next time.

Al doesn’t have any clue why they would do that.

“It’s because you’re a badass, Al”, says Lucy. Al decidedly knows that he isn’t, but he might have tricked a couple of seventeen-year-olds into thinking he is.

Mirasol greets him with a smile and hands him a butterbeer. Al pays and heads over to their usual table. Fawley opts to stay and chat with her at the bar.

What a weird combination of people in is life to meet. Scorpius’ ex-girlfriend from Fourth Year and Al’s—Fawley.

It’s not long until the students start pouring in. Al knows all of their names by now and they’ve gotten over the Potter thing, mostly.

Al was right, they have started summoning. Tiny stuff, buttons and needles. Not that it makes much of a difference, at least not to Al.

He was also right in that all of them really struggle with it.

He goes through all the usual exercises—theory, wand movement, visualisation. He shows it to them a couple of times.

It helps, a little.

Alexandra, a petite Slytherin girl, throws her wand on the table in frustration. “I just don’t get it!”, she grumbles, “How do you make something out of nothing? You can’t just speak stuff into existence!”

You can, that’s the entire point, but Al still takes the time to consider it.

“You do that with any Transfiguration, though, don’t you? If you transform a match into a needle, then you suddenly have a bit of metal that wasn’t there before.”

“Well, yes”, Alexandra says, “But it doesn’t come from nothing. The match becomes the needle, it doesn’t just appear.”

“What if”, Al starts, slowly, carefully, because this isn’t something he’s ever read in a book, not something he can be sure of. It’s just how he thinks, more than anything else, regardless of whether it’s true or not. “What if you make it pretend that it exists?”

Alexandra’s brows furrow in confusion.

“What does that even mean?”, asks Lucy, voice somewhere between intrigued and desperate.

“Well”, says Al, “it’s not like you really need to create anything out of nothing. You just need to make it so that it looks like there is a needle and when you touch it, it feels like a needle and when you let it fall to the ground it makes a sound like a needle.”

“You make nothing pretend like it’s a needle.”, says one of the boys, Gordon, if Al remembers correctly. 

“That’s how I think about it”, says Al, “yeah.”

He looks around the table almost like a nervous gesture.

“But it’s not—“, says Lucy, “a needle?”

“You make it look like a needle, sound like a needle, feel like a needle, react to anything the way a needle would.”, says Al.

“How can you tell that it’s not a needle, then?”

“You can’t”, says Alexandra, “that’s what makes it brilliant.” Her face is lighting up with excitement. “If you have something that acts in any circumstance like it’s a needle, you can’t distinguish it from a real needle.”

“So this” Lucy picks up the button that Al summoned earlier and flicks it on the table. “isn’t a button? It just acts like it is?”

She’s looking at Al.

“I don’t know.”, he says.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“If something looks like a button, feels like a button, sounds like a button and acts in every way like a button, doesn’t that make it a button? What even makes anything a button?”

Lucy stares at him.

The rest of the students also stare at him.

He’s had their attention on him the entire time now, but like this, it feels different. It almost makes him flustered again.

He clears his throat. “Well, the point is, it doesn’t really matter, does it? I’ll be able to use this button just like a normal one and if I show it to anyone, they won’t be able to tell a difference. It doesn’t really matter if it actually exists or not, as long as it acts like it does, right?”

A pause.

“Err, you can keep that in mind if you think that will help you.”

_Merlin, what the hell am I even doing here?_

The lesson doesn’t go on much longer after that. He isn’t sure if it was a good one, but these days, there isn’t a lot Al is sure of.

* * *

When they come home, Fawley puts on the kettle.

Al watches him. Somehow he feels a little less unsettled than when they left for the _Hogshead_ this morning, a little more equipped to handle the mess waiting for him.

“I need to pop over to Rose and Scorpius’”, he tells Fawley, figuring he might as well get it over with while he still feels like he can deal with it.

“Alright”, Fawley says, pouring himself his second cup. He doesn’t question Al’s reasons.

“Call me if you need anything.”, Al says, “Do you have the phone?”

Fawley holds up the phone to show him.

“Thank you”, Al says, sounding stiffer than he means to.

Like always and everywhere, he walks.

On the way, as he tries to sort his thoughts, he realises he doesn’t even know for sure that they’ll be home. Both of them, Rose especially, have such an erratic work schedule nowadays that Al can’t really keep up anymore.

Oh well. Either they’ll be there, or they won’t, there isn’t really much more to it.

Sure enough, when he rings the buzzer, the door opens.

He walks up the ramp to their flat. It’s on the ground floor so it isn’t too much of a hassle for Scorpius when he has to use his crutches or the wheelchair.

Rose has opened the door, waiting for him in the hallway.

“Hey”, she says simply, before letting him in.

Al makes a strange salute gesture in response.

“They called Scorpius in this afternoon”, says Rose, “Magical tantrum, I think, the poor kid.”

“Yeah”, says Al.

They sit down, the same spot they were sitting yesterday, but that’s just Rose’ and Scorpius lounge.

“Do you want some tea?”, asks Rose and Al says yes, even though he just had some with Fawley.

“I was mean, yesterday.”, says Al as Rose settles back down with their cups.

To his surprise, Rose shakes her head. “No, you’re right. I don’t think we can help Scorpius much with this anymore. We’ve considered stuff with his dad and with me and all that—that’s the part that’s about our family. Anything else—you’re not a politician, Al. You’re not an expert on this kind of stuff.”

It is what Al meant, yesterday, and her gentleness makes it hard to disagree, but still—

Al just shrugs. There’s nothing he can think of to say about that, is the truth.

“Scorpius is a big boy.”, says Rose, “He can handle you being a bit blunt.”

“Yeah.”, says Al. He takes a sip of his tea. “But I can be—better, usually.”

Rose gives him a look, the kind that he craves but at the same time makes him feel entirely too seen.

“What’s going on with you, Al?”, she says, her head turned to one side, voice still so calm and gentle like everything’s alright.

Al—isn’t sure if he expected that kind of question. And there is so much that he doesn’t—he can’t—he isn’t even sure if he has a clue at all—

“Fawley’s getting worse.”, is what comes out in the end.

He almost can’t look at Rose. He knows that she doesn’t pity him, though she would have reason enough, but she doesn’t see him like that. The compassion of it is already too much. He doesn’t really deserve it.

“Do you need different potions?”, she asks.

Al shrugs, still not looking at her. “I don’t think so. We have regular check-ups now, and they don’t want to change anything. I just—well, he’s getting more tired, I can tell. He sleeps more and he tires out faster—”

“Yeah”, Rose says, “I’m so sorry.”

She understands this at least as well as Al does. Probably better.

Al looks at her, finally.

“Nothing I can do, really.”

“Oh Al”, says Rose, “You’re already doing everything.”

She comes over to hug him and Al lets himself be held by her.

He doesn’t think she’s right, but somehow, the fact that she does helps a little.

She can’t help that it’s only a small part of the weird conundrum that’s going on in Al’s brain that he can’t even start trying to understand.

“Hey”, Al says, after a minute or ten, “How do you—how do you know that you love Scorpius?”

Rose shifts away a little to look at him. Al almost regrets asking.

“You love Scorpius.”, she says firmly, “You don’t have to—you’re fine.”

Al shakes his head, she’s misunderstanding him, that’s not what he has doubts about, he—

“No, I mean, not about Scorpius specifically, I just mean—you’re in love with him. How do you know you’re in love with someone?”

She blinks.

“I think you can just tell if you are.”, she says, slowly.

Al taps his fingers on his thighs impatiently. “Yeah, but—imagine if you wouldn’t, just know—how would you tell? What does it feel like for you?”

She looks at the ceiling, curling a long strand of hair around her finger.

“I guess—I guess it’s not one thing, really. It’s a little bit of that I just really like him a lot—there’s a lot that I can see in him that makes him loveable, you know? But even more than that, there are parts that really suck, but, you know, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter as much, because—well, people aren’t perfect, right? I sure as hell know I’m not. And I know that he’s really trying for me, to—Merlin, this is going to sound stupid, but you know—to do right by me. And I try the same thing. And I really want that, and I’m so glad that I can have it.”

“Oh.”, says Al.

He isn’t sure what he expected, really. Maybe nothing. But this—this sounds kind of perfect, actually.

Also like something that he could never touch or even get close to, like the stars or having a socially acceptable career. 

He’s not sure if it’s any kind of answer to what he was trying to ask at all, but that’s not Rose’ fault.

She looks back at him again, looking even more worried than before.

“Al, do you—” She stops, changing courses. “Why would you want to know that?”

Al shrugs. It’s not that he doesn’t want to explain, really, in all honesty, he isn’t _sure_ if he wants to explain, because he doesn’t really know why he wants to know in the first place.

“I was just wondering.”

“Well”, she says, her voice getting stronger again, “Just don’t worry that Scorpius thinks you don’t care about him anymore or anything. It’s just—things are so different now. He doesn’t always do well with that.”

Al nods silently into his tea, even though he doesn’t understand. _How can Scorpius be the one who has a hard time with things being different when he’s the one changing all the time?_

“You know”, says Rose, and her voice is quivering a little, in a way that Al’s heard so often from her, but always makes his insides contract anyway, “I’m sorry. There’s been so much going on lately—I haven’t been paying enough attention, but—you’ll always have us, alright? You’ll always have me.”

Al puts an arm around her and squeezes her back. “I know”, he says, “Of course.”

Because she’s scared, too.

Al knows, because he knows her and none of this makes sense, but he knows this, and maybe he knows a little what she means, too. Trying to do right by somebody.

Everything is different and everyone is scared. Al doesn’t know why that’s such a revelation.

But at least they’re trying.

* * *

Fawley and Al go to another gallery.

It’s modern art, fun and random and not the kind that’s easy to understand. Al likes it, because it’s the kind of art you’d have to be brave to put somewhere as such. Or at least he thinks so.

Fawley, he thinks, likes it mostly because it can still surprise him. Al doesn’t particularly care why he likes it, though, just that he does.

They walk through some tiny park afterwards. The air is still crisp and cool, but the sun is out and warms their skin, showing the first signs of spring.

Al wants to keep this moment and save it somewhere forever.

* * *

“I need to listen to you more”, says Scorpius, the next time they meet.

“It’s fine.”, says Al, “I don’t even say that much.”

It’s the truth.

“Yeah”, says Scorpius, “I know.”

And he does. Al knows that he does.

And he’s trying so much it hurts. They both are.

* * *

Al misses Cath.

He still sees her a lot, at least three times a week at work, usually more often, so maybe that doesn’t make sense. But it’s not the same as talking about their feelings and the world in the quiet of the early morning as Al is almost ready to go to sleep.

Of course it isn’t, and it wouldn’t be and that’s fine, should be fine. It is fine.

He just didn’t expect the feeling, didn’t expect to feel it so intensely.

But he can deal with it. They’re still friends. Even more than that, he now definitely knows they’re friends, so it’s actually more than before.

So if he wants to talk to her at two in the morning when he feels like shit and he doesn’t know what the hell he is doing because everything is too much and he isn’t sure if he’s trying in the right way anymore, he’ll get over that, too.

* * *

It’s two weeks later that Al gets a letter.

Well, he actually kind of gets letters all the time, but that’s not the point. This one is different, and it’s entirely unexpected. It’s a letter from Hogwarts.

Al thinks it must be a mistake at first, but no, it’s quite clearly addressed to him.

_What in the world?_

He stares at the letter for a moment, big H, purple ink and all.

_What in the world could that be about?_

Well, he won’t find out unless he opens it.

As it turns out, the letter is not really from Hogwarts. Well, it kind of is, but it’s more personal than that. It’s from Professor McGonagall. Personally.

And she wants to—have a meeting with him. At his convenience.

What. The. Hell.

“McGonagall wants to see me.”, he says, out loud.

“McGonagall?”, asks Fawley, “The teacher?”

“Yeah”, says Al, wondering what other McGonagall there even is, “Yeah, the teacher. She’s the headmistress, actually.”

“I know”, says Fawley, “I painted her portrait, though I suppose it won’t be in use until she passes. Always seemed like a reasonable person to me.”

Reasonable is one way to describe Professor McGonagall. It doesn’t really encompass her, but it’s certainly true.

“What could she possibly want from me?”, asks Al.

Fawley shrugs, seemingly completely unaffected. “You were her student, weren’t you? Maybe she just wants to catch up over tea.”

“You think so?”, asks Al. It doesn’t seem likely to him, but who knows.

“I would”, says Fawley, “If I were a teacher.”

“You are my teacher”, says Al.

“Exactly. I catch up over tea with you all the time”

Al smiles back at him grimly. “Sure you do.”

It takes him almost two hours to compose a response. It’s ridiculous, really, he’s written a million letters in his adult life, a lot of them formal and even out of those many were to set up some sort of meeting, for Fawley more often than for himself.

But this—this is different. It makes him nervous. He feels a little like he’s still in school and he’s gotten in trouble for something, except that he doesn’t really know what.

He tries to convince himself that Fawley is right and McGonagall just wants to catch up—it’s been a few years, maybe she does that with all students eventually?—but it doesn’t really work.

In the end, he gives up on questioning every letter, anyway—because what good will it do?—and keeps his response as simple and clear as he can.

He considers writing to Lucy to ask her if she knows if anything is going on at Hogwarts, but ultimately thinks it silly. He doesn’t even have a clue what this could be about, so what would he even ask?

Besides, it isn’t sure that he’d even get a response before next Saturday, anyway, and he can see her then.

That doesn’t keep him from thinking about it.

“Did your teachers ever try to catch up with you?”, he asks Cath while he puts some glasses in the dishwasher.

“What do you mean, from high school?”

“Yeah”, Al says.

“Not really, no”, she says, “I mean, I guess we’ll probably have a ten-year-reunion or something, but it’s still a bit until then, so—” She shrugs. “I don’t really see why they would, though, I wasn’t a very interesting student, I don’t think. I would just be awkward and kind of boring for everyone involved.”

“Hm.”, makes Al.

“Why do you ask, anyway?”

“I got a letter from my former school.”, he says.

“Oh, do they want donations or something? You went to some weird private school, right?”

She grabs a glass and starts making another cocktail.

“No, not donations. It was just my old teacher being like: ‘Dear Albus, I would like to meet you at your convenience!’”

Cath stops her hands in motion. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I feel like I’m in trouble or something.” He bristles.

“Scary teacher, then?”

“I mean, kind of. It’s not like—she wasn’t mean or anything, just quite strict. I always thought she liked me, though. As much as a teacher can even like a student.”

Cath shrugs. “Seriously, I have no clue what she could want. Maybe it doesn’t even have anything to do with school. Maybe she wants to buy a painting from you or whatever.”

Al huffs. “Where would she get that idea from?”

Cath doesn’t answer for a second, as finishes up the cocktail and serves it.

Oh, right. They’re actually supposed to be doing work here, too. Al almost forgot. Good thing Monica isn’t around to watch them too closely.

“I don’t know, but it’s a free world.”, Cath says, as she comes back to him, “She could have seen it anywhere, really, and decided she wanted some. She’s allowed, even if she was your teacher. Maybe she wants to flex on some other school—look at our talented alumni and how much better we are! Or whatever drama fancy schools probably have.”

Al almost starts choking. That’s not—how Hogwarts works at all. But he can’t really tell her that, so. “I can’t really imagine her doing that. Besides, I’ve never sold my art to anyone. She couldn’t have possibly seen it anywhere.”

Cath shrugs. “You never know, it’s always the quiet ones—wait what?”

Al huffs out a laughter. “I have no clue what you just tried to imply, but I don’t take any responsibility for it.”

“What—no, no, I meant—you don’t sell your art?”

“Uh, no”, says Al and collects a few empty glasses from the top of the bar. “I mean, I guess I, uh, pretended to be an Italian street artist once and sold a couple of bad caricatures to tourists, but—”

Cath is blankly staring at him, stopping entirely in her tracks.

“What?”, Al says, defensively. He actually did keep all the weirder parts of the story to himself, so he doesn’t really know what she has to complain about. All of that freezing is really pushing the dramatics.

“Just—how are you even a real human being?”

Al is pretty sure that’s a rhetorical question. “It made sense at the time.” It really did, kind of, actually.

“And why in the world would you pretend to be Italian?”

“It was in Italy?”

There is a pause.

Cath sighs and goes back to her glasses. “Forget this tangent, we’re not getting anywhere here—other than unspecific Italian shenanigans you’ve never actually sold anything? Why?”

She seems so genuinely surprised at this, no, almost outraged, he doesn’t have an answer.

“It was never, uh, in the cards, I guess?”

Cath raises her eyebrows so high it’s half a miracle that they don’t completely disappear into her hairline.

The thing is, that’s just about as true as it gets. Al’s never even considered it, but even if he were to—he’s always known there’s no real market for the kind of stuff he makes. It’s all magical, so the muggle world is out anyway, and he doesn’t like portraits—the niche of people that care about the kind of things he likes to make is so small it’s basically non-existent.

“You do realise that you’re talking to a literal business student, right? I’ve been indoctrinated the past five years to maximise profits and be the ultimate capitalist. You can’t just—not—”

“It’s fine”, says Al, “It doesn’t really matter—“

“I think it does, I mean, you could totally, you’re really good—and artists deserve to be paid, too—”

“It’s fine”, says Al again, a little too harshly perhaps, but he doesn’t really know how else to end this conversation. And he certainly can’t let it go on, because. Well. He might say things that he absolutely can’t say. Why does he keep getting himself in these situations?

“Oh”, says Cath, “Uh, sure. Sorry.”

Al can tell that she feels bad, and that makes him feel bad. Shit. But he doesn’t really know what else to say.

They work in silence for a few minutes, giving Al time to question all of his life choices while doing the dishes. Splendid.

But seriously, _why is he such an idiot?_

“You do know that I was just kidding, right? About the being a business student and stuff. I didn’t mean—I’m not a literal evil money machine or something.”, says Cath after a while.

Al sighs. “I know you’re not evil, obviously—I’m just being weird about this, I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t have a better explanation. He’s lucky, this time, because she doesn’t ask for one.

Yeah. He’ll get over it. Soon, probably.

* * *

It takes him a stupidly long time to make the connection. Honestly, Al doesn’t know how he didn’t realise it the very second he opened the letter.

But alas, he didn’t, and now he’s standing there, in the middle of the art room, Saturday afternoon, panicking. And there’s nothing, really, nothing at all he can do about it.

He even scheduled the bloody meeting with McGonagall _right after_ his tutoring session. How thoughtless and entitled can one person get?

But there’s nothing he can do about it now. He can’t even not go. It’s way too late to cancel and the students are counting on him. McGonagall on the other hand—he couldn’t possibly even think about cancelling on her. Besides, that would be even worse, wouldn’t it?

Rose has a rare day off, so he drops off his phone with her so Fawley can call in case something happens.

“You haven’t heard anything from McGonagall lately?”, he asks when he drops in.

Rose gives him a confused look. “I mean, she’s doing fine, I think? Were there any news about her or something?”

Rose is almost as bad as Al is about reading newspapers, for the same reason, with the crucial difference that she has Scorpius who updates her on the important stuff.

“No. She just. Wrote me a letter. That she wants to see me. It thought maybe she just did that to everyone?”

She doesn’t, obviously. Al is screwed.

“Not to me”, says Rose. “Maybe it’s just her favourites.”

She’s adorably optimistic. Maybe Scorpius is finally rubbing off, after all these years.

He makes a grimace. “She’ll kill me.”

“Probably. I’ll make sure you have a nice funeral.” Scratch that. He isn’t. He definitely isn’t.

“Thanks for nothing!”, Al yells as he walks out the door.

The exchange somehow still makes him feel better, though it doesn’t last for long.

He tries his best for the tutoring session, but he can tell that he isn’t on top of his game. They still manage a lot more successful summons than last week, but Al has a hard time feeling proud of that, when certain doom is so close.

“What’s up with you?”, asks Lucy, equally blunt as perceptive, just like she’s always been, when Al tells the group to take a break.

Al doesn’t have the energy to lie to her, nor does he really see the point. He’s been wondering if he should say something about this possibly being their last session, anyway.

“McGonagall asked me to see her, so she’ll be chewing me out for being so—for messing up her teaching.”

Lucy crunches her nose. “What are you talking about? You’re not messing up her teaching!”

“Well”, Al says, very aware that obviously Lucy wouldn’t think that, “I’m certainly messing _with_ it, so—”

“No you aren’t”, she says, but Al ignores her.

“—so she has a reason to chew me out for it.”

“That’s unfair!”, she says, way too loudly, and even Mirasol from the other side of the room looks up from polishing her glasses. Al emphasises. No matter what you do, there are always fingerprints.

“Merlin, quiet down!”, he shushes Lucy.

“It is, though!”, Lucy says, remarkably quieter. “Does that mean she’ll make you stop?”

“Well, yeah, probably.”, says Al, “as is her—”

“She can’t do that!”, Lucy argues passionately, “We’ve all improved so much!”

Al has a hard time arguing with that. It’s not like he knows that it’s true—it’s just—it really feels like it is. It feels like they’ve been making so much progress over the last couple of weeks.

“Still—”

“She won’t!”, declares Lucy, “She can’t! And if she does, I’ll—I’ll complain!”

There are few ideas that terrify Al more.

“Don’t you dare, that’s even worse—I’m already being extremely presumptuous, acting like I know better than her—”

“No, you—that doesn’t even make any sense!” She crosses her arms. “Besides, study groups are totally within Hogwarts rules, and you can go to Hogsmeade whenever you want as long as you’re seventeen.”

Al doesn’t know how to argue with her.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll talk to her.”, he says.

By which really, he means that he’ll apologise as best as he can and then try to never encounter Professor McGonagall again, ever. If that’s even possible.

But he can inform Lucy of that some other time.

* * *

Walking back up to Hogwarts is weird. He hasn’t walked that way since he was still a student and he’s only been there once since—at Lily’s graduation, where he was too preoccupied with having some kind of emergency to really take it in again.

He’s kind of forgotten that it is just that—a sight to be taken in.

The lake, and the forest, and the castle—homesickness floods him like a wave and he has to stop in his tracks for a moment. He didn’t expect that.

But he doesn’t have time to get nostalgic, not really, the old watch in his pocket tells him that he only has a few minutes and he really rather wouldn’t be late for this.

He awkwardly walks in the great portal along with the Seventh Years he was just tutoring into the entrance hall, relatively empty on late Saturday afternoon. It’s too early for dinner, so most of the younger students or those that don’t take NEWT Transfiguration are probably hanging out in their common rooms, or perhaps the library, or outside on the grounds if they aren’t the kind that is deterred by the cold spring this year.

Still, the few of them that Al encounters on his way up to the seventh floor give him funny looks, probably wondering who he is, or, if they happen to know that, why he is here. Al can emphasise.

He parts ways with Lucy when the paths to McGonagall’s office and the Gryffindor common room diverge.

“Take care, Luce”, he says, hugging her lightly.

“Yeah, yeah”, she mumbles, “Don’t let McGonagall scare you away”, she says. She’s not entirely convinced of Al’s tactics going into this conversation. She’s of course completely right.

“Yeah, yeah”, Al says vaguely, he has neither the time nor the energy to argue with her, “See you soon.”

“You better!”, Lucy calls after him, “Next Saturday!”

Al waves as an acknowledgement as he turns his back to her.

He doesn’t even have to think about the paths he takes, knowledge of the quirks of the castle and its ways still ingrained in his brain, but everything, starting from his lack of a school uniform and ending at the funny looks reminds him that he doesn’t belong here anymore. Combined with the almost forceful familiarity of the place, it’s a very confusing feeling.

When he reaches the gargoyle in front of the entrance of Professor McGonagall’s office, he takes a moment to collect himself. Okay, okay.

He’ll be fine. He’ll apologise and he’ll be fine. He’s even thought to make the effort to not look halfway professional this morning, which really means he’s thought to wear something that isn’t obviously Muggle clothes. That makes him feel a little better. Not because he prefers robes in anyway to jeans and hoodies, but because it makes him feel less out of place. Not much—but a little.

“Can you please tell Professor McGonagall that Al Potter is here to see her?”, he asks the gargoyle, who nods quietly, doubtlessly relaying his message to the other side of the staircase he guards.

Al wonders how that works. Obviously, the gargoyle isn’t a painting, but the mechanism is quite similar. Maybe it could work with any work of art?

He files the thought away for later. That’s not really important right now.

Luckily, or unluckily, Al isn’t quite sure which is the right descriptor, Al doesn’t have to wait long for the door to open and let him up on the staircase.

When he enters the office, Professor McGonagall is sitting at her desk, obviously waiting for him. Al can’t help but stare at the dozens of portraits pretending to sleep right above her for a second, Fawley’s style clearly recognisable in at least the last two, but he calls himself to order and pulls his gaze away.

“Hello”, he says, awkwardly, wondering if there is a better way to greet a person in a formal situation.

“Hello, Mr. Potter”, she says, almost cordially, “It’s good to see you.”

She actually stands up to shake his hand, which strikes Al as strange, too equal of a gesture, but then again, he supposes he isn’t her student anymore, so it makes sense, kind of.

“Why don’t you have a seat?”, she says, her hand pointing in the direction of a chair in front of her desk, as she sits down behind it.

Al tries not to get distracted by the paintings again. All of them are still pretending to sleep, but Al has seen enough portraits in his time to know that’s not the case.

“Thank you”, he says, because it seems like he should be saying something, only he isn’t quite sure what that might be.

Maybe he should just start upfront with what this is going to be about, at least that way it’ll look like he’s actually—actually, he doesn’t know what it would look like.

“Mr. Potter”, she says, then for some reason, corrects herself: “Albus. Would you like a biscuit?”

Al—stares. He thinks he might have his mouth open.

“What?”

Professor McGonagall sighs. “Oh, you Potter boys really are all the same.”

Al doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t really like being compared to James, especially if he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it. Well, he knows, kind of. Not about the biscuits, though.

“Uh, no thanks”, he says, anyway, because he’s trying to be polite.

“Fine”, she says, “Just tea, then.”

She with a flicker of her wand, a tea pot appears, along with two cups and she pours them some tea.

Al is really wondering what her strategy here is, beyond trying to make him nervous. Maybe she’s waiting for him to confess, every second he doesn’t say anything getting counted against him even more than the whole thing on its own already is.

“So”, she says, pouring in her milk, “What have you been up to these past couple years since you left here?”

Al doesn’t say _What?_ again, but just barely.

Seriously _, what the hell?_ This can’t be real. This must be some elaborate psycho game that he doesn’t get, and honestly, he doesn’t know how to play along with it.

“I’m sorry”, he breaks, “I really mean no disrespect, in fact, I respect you a great deal, I don’t think—I didn’t want to—I was just trying to do Lucy a favour, and she just kept bringing more people, it wasn’t supposed to be such a big thing.”

“Albus”, she says.

Al silences instantly.

“Were you under the impression that I was angry at you for your little tutoring sessions?”

Al blinks. “Uh, yes?”, he says, feeling stupid as he says it, but he can’t think of a cleverer response.

She sighs. “Are you sure you don’t want a biscuit?”

Al takes a biscuit. At this point, he thinks it might be rude not to.

“I guess we might as well start straight into the subject matter.”

Al would very much like that. Or, at least, he would like it more than the alternative.

“A couple of months ago”, McGonagall says calmly as Al munches on his biscuit, “I noticed that many of my seventh-year students were improving massively, and very fast at that, unusually so. Obviously, I wanted to know what the reason for that sudden improvement was, as pleasant as it is. I asked around a little and I heard about their new study group. And after a while, I was surprised to hear that you were the one that did the tutoring.”

“Yes”, Al says, feeling a little calmer, even though he still doesn’t know what he’s doing here, or rather, now that it doesn’t seem like she’s mad, he really doesn’t know what he’s doing here.

“I was—Lucy, my cousin”—obviously McGonagall knows that she’s his cousin, but somehow he feels like he has to say it again, like a moron—“she told me that she was struggling a little, so I offered to help. Then she started, uh, bringing more people from the class and it just—snowballed a little. I didn’t mean it to be a big thing.”

“I see.”, Professor McGonagall says, pushing back her square glasses.

The sight fills Al with another bout of weird homesickness, the kind that he does and doesn’t want to go back to. It’s not even McGonagall herself, though that would probably be even weirder, it’s just—transfiguration class. Sure, Al was good at it, but he also liked it a lot. Sometimes he misses it. Or maybe it’s just the feeling of accomplishment that he misses.

“I said I was surprised before”, she continues, “to hear it was you that helped my students so much, and it is true, to an extent, but at the same time, I wasn’t surprised at all.”

“You weren’t?”

She shakes her head. “I have had many students in my time here, of course, and I like to think that I remember most of them, but there are always some that stand out. You” She fixes him with her gaze and this time Al doesn’t try to escape with his eyes. “are one of them.”

“I am?”

Al likes to think he was always quite quiet at school, known but more because of his name and his friends rather than anything he did. He’s fine with that, most of the time, even takes a certain comfort in it.

“You were always very talented at transfigurations.”, she says.

“Not as much as Lily”, Al can’t help but say. He knows it sounds whiny, as soon as it comes out, a jealous sibling, or even fishing for compliments, but that’s not what he’s trying to do at all. He just—well, it’s true, isn’t it? Lily is good at everything. Al isn’t even mad about it.

Professor McGonagall makes a dismissive gesture. “Your sister is another matter. And it doesn’t make what I just said any less true.”

Doesn’t it though?

“Yeah.”, he says, anyway.

“I like to keep up with the life of my students a little, you know, the directions they go and the paths they take. With some, it seems almost predestined, like with your sister, or your friend Mr. Malfoy—”

Al almost snorts. There’s no way she could know what Scorpius is up to. People aren’t really supposed to know that yet. As for Lily—Al doesn’t know how in the world she could have foreseen Lily getting a muggle degree to leave the country to get another, even better muggle degree, when she was literally the most powerful witch in their generation. But then again, maybe teachers know about that kind of stuff.

“—others turn out to be quite a surprise. With you,”, she says, “I was almost certain that you would pursue transfiguration further, maybe study with one of the masters for a bit before you go on your own path, that’s common enough—but I didn’t hear anything about you at all, other than idle gossip, until about a week ago, with the tutoring sessions.”

“No”, Al says, stomach heavy, “You wouldn’t have.” He’s supposed to elaborate, but he doesn’t know how to, doesn’t know what to say.

She’s still looking at him, in the familiar way she does with her students, always a bit like an assessment, like a test, but also—like a teacher. Someone that wants you to find the answer.

Al hasn’t found any answers in quite a while, he just finds questions. This seems to him like a metaphor for something else in his life, or maybe everything, and not a kind one.

Al’s a painter though, not a writer. Metaphors are too much for him today.

“Can you guess what I asked you here for?”

Al can’t. So far, she’s just aggressively complimented him and then implied his wasted potential. Sort of. He thinks it came from a place of good intentions, but. Yeah.

“Not really”, he says, after racking his brain for a minute.

“Albus”, she says, “I’m not very young anymore”

Wow, that took a turn. There’s no comment he could make that wouldn’t be either rude or inappropriate or both, so Al refrains from making one.

“and for a long time I’ve been doing two different jobs that are meant for two different people.”

“So”, Al says, confused as to what any of that has to do with him, “You’re stepping down from Hogwarts?”

“Ah—no. Of course not.” She clears her throat. “Not for a long time if I can help it. What I mean is—well, for a long time now I’ve been looking for someone to succeed me as the transfiguration teacher. It’s important to me that the person that ends up doing that is actually suitable for the job, which is why I have put off restaffing it for so long. And well—obviously it wouldn’t be immediately, but—that is my offer to you, Albus. I could recommend you to one of my colleagues, Professor Marchbanks perhaps, to study under them, and eventually, I would offer you to return to Hogwarts. It’s high time that the position is filled and I do believe that you could do a great job at it.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“Oh.”

This is—it’s not what Al expected, obviously, quite the opposite.

“Are you—Do you mean that?”

She smiles thinly. “I tend to mean the things I say.”

“That’s really—“, Al says, struggling to find the right response, the things you’re supposed to say to that, but—there is something about this entire situation, something about his entire visit here, from when he came inside the walls, all his anxiety aside, he—his stomach sinks.

It’s not regret so much as it’s simple realisation.

And it’s crystal clear.

“Professor”, he says, “Are you familiar with the work of Alistair Fawley?”

She looks back at him, surprised. “Of course. He is well-known in his field, of course, he painted several of the portraits here.”

“I know.”, says Al.

“Though in recent years he seems to have drawn back a bit, I hear that his health is declining.”

It is.

“It is.”, says Al. He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but in the end, it doesn’t matter.

“You asked me before”, he adds quickly, “What I’ve been doing, ever since I graduated. The truth is—of course we had career counselling with Professor Turpin in fifth year, but I wasn’t—I’m sure she told me about all my great options, but honestly, I’m not very good at taking advice, even if it’s quite good. Maybe especially then.”

He pauses then, but McGonagall doesn’t interrupt him.

“I just—I felt a little lost, honestly I think and—” It’s hard to talk about, those days of his life feel a bit hazy in hindsight, maybe because he has the clarity to know what happened after, but maybe it’s more than that. His life then—it was kind of hazy. “—but I knew I needed to do something, so I—I saw one of Al—Mr. Fawley’s paintings in a book, so I went to find him and I asked him to teach me and—” He doesn’t know how to explain this part, doesn’t know how to say it in a way that makes sense, that covers everything that clenches around his heart right now. “—I owe him a great deal.”

He pauses again.

“I’m afraid I can’t really afford to wait to pay back that debt.”

His throat constricts and he has to look away. He hopes that she understands, because if he has to put it in any clearer terms, Al is quite sure that he would start to cry. He doesn’t want to cry about this, preferably never, but at the very least not yet.

“So”, he finishes, a bit abruptly, “I can’t. I’m sorry, I really appreciate it, and I actually—I’m so honoured, but I think—it’s not what I—well.”

“I see.”, Professor McGonagall says.

Al can’t read her tone. He hopes he’s not made her angry after all, but if he has, there’s nothing he can do about it. He can’t change his answer, he knows that. He won’t change it.

He’s missed Hogwarts, sure, more intensely than he’d known. But he’s missed it the way you miss your old favourite clothes or your childhood bedroom—a place you can’t go back to, not necessarily because it’s not there anymore, but because you’re different now. Even if you go back, it won’t be the same, they won’t fit anymore.

There’s a different version of him, here, and there’s something about that version that Al misses, even if he doesn’t like to think about that.

And yes, maybe he could build another version of himself here again, but not—not now. Not in this universe. There’s other things he can’t leave behind.

“I’m sorry.”, Al says again.

She studies him. He can feel it, and he wants to look away, but at the same time he feels like he isn’t allowed, so he doesn’t.

“I respect your loyalty, Albus”, she says, “But I have to ask you to think about it.”

Al shakes his head. “I won’t change my mind.”

There is a slight pause where Al isn’t sure if he’s supposed to leave. It’s clear that the entire point of this meeting has reached its conclusion.

Professor McGonagall sighs again. “What do I keep saying about Potter boys?”

“I’m not that much like James”, Al says now, feeling braver than before.

“Oh no, you aren’t.”, McGonagall replies, in a bit of a turn, “But I’ve been dealing with your sort for three generations now, there’s other options to choose from.”

* * *

Al doesn’t feel sad when he gets back home, more just—heavy. Nothing’s changed, of course, but that’s the point, isn’t it? He could have changed something, and he didn’t. Except that he couldn’t have.

He made the decision a while ago, a long time ago, in fact, but he feels it more now than he has ever before. He doesn’t doubt that it’s right, weirdly enough, because usually he has enough doubts about everything, even if they’re buried. It’s just that for the first time, it’s been said out loud, in not so many words. For the first time he can really feel the echo of that decision, a glimpse of another maybe.

And perhaps Al is stupid for making this decision, but. Well. To him it really doesn’t feel like there’s another option.

“What did she want, then?”, Fawley asks, when Al gets food out to make dinner for them.

Al smiles, trying to mask the weight of his thoughts.

“Just to catch up”, he says.

Just that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... what do you think? Did I manage to break your heart for Al a little?  
> Do you think he's justified in his feelings/actions/decisions? What about Scorpius? Rose?  
> Thank you for reading and please let me know what you think!


	22. what would my head be like if not for my shoulders (or without your smile)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the title of this fic very much applies, and Al has a hard summer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a long one, and A LOT happens in it. Not sure if I'm entirely happy with it, but there it is. I'm super interested in what you are thinking about everything that's going on and if it comes across the way I mean it to.

Al doesn’t tell Fawley about McGonagall’s offer. He doesn’t think there’s any kind of good it would do.

He doesn’t tell Rose and Scorpius, either, or his parents. He’s pretty sure that, well. He doesn’t think that they would get it. Or maybe they would, maybe they would understand why Al is doing what he’s doing, but he has a feeling that they would try to change his mind, anyway. That it’s better for him in the long run.

Al doesn’t believe that. He would feel bad forever, and doesn’t seem like a good deal, even if he gets to be less disappointing to everyone he knows in the process.

Al thinks that by now, they’re mostly over the disappointment. Or at the very least, used to it. He doesn’t want to drag that back up again.

He’s not afraid that they would actually change his mind. He knows they won’t. He just doesn’t want to argue.

So he won’t.

He kind of wants to tell Cath, not for any reason that makes sense particularly, but he can’t do that either, because he can’t come up with a way to wrap that into muggle terms that sound plausible. Their world works differently, with so many more people in it and without the looming secrecy everywhere.

So, unless McGonagall’s talked about her plans with him, nobody knows. She doesn’t seem like the gossipy sort, but it doesn’t really matter, anyways.

It doesn’t.

* * *

Al tells Scorpius to talk to McGonagall about his plans for the secrecy laws.

Scorpius thinks it’s a great idea, because a lot of his plans are centered around children, of course, and Hogwarts has to play a big part in that.

He’s right, of course, but Al’s more thinking about what she said about unsurprising students. He’s not sure if that makes Scorpius one or just the opposite, but he figures it makes for an interesting thought either way.

A sort of response to his declination. There you go, you get the other one instead.

“Are you doing better?”, Scorpius asks at the end of the conversation.

Al just nods. He’s not lying.

It makes no sense for him to be feeling better now, but he is. That’s fine, though, it’s better in any case. And besides, Al’s feelings rarely make any sense.

And just like that, life goes on again.

As always, the passage of time sneaks up on Al.

By now, he and Fawley have pretty much exhausted London’s repertoire of art galleries, but that’s okay. They can make their own fun and their own art.

They go on walks instead and Fawley points out people to Al, usually the kind that Al overlooks almost automatically. Fawley tells Al how he’d paint them, what features he would highlight and which attributes he would give them. The backgrounds. What would be tricky.

Al listens very carefully.

Then he tells Fawley about the haze of fog that’s hanging over the city and how the way it diffuses bright lights at night sometimes looks—well, not beautiful, but something like that, anyway.

Fawley listens very carefully, too.

It’s about teaching, a little, but it’s also about everything else.

It’s a kind of language Al doesn’t know how to speak with anyone else and he keeps every word of it closer to him than any other treasure he might have.

Cath goes into thesis panic mode, then she gets into presentation panic mode, then she gets into exams panic mode—Al might be getting the order wrong, they all sort of bleed together.

He can tell that she isn’t sleeping enough again, but it’s still somehow not as bad as it was before, he doesn’t think. He quietly attributes that to Sally’s absence, even though that might not be true. Carl, unpleasant as he is, doesn’t demand much attention as far as roommates go.

“At least it’s quiet.”, Cath always says when Al asks about it, before her eyes glaze over again, lost in a world of numbers and business models or something else that Al doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t mind though. He likes to listen to her rant about all the things she still has to do and finish during the calmer hours of their shifts.

At some point, he starts bringing her care packages to work, filled with home-made food, the same way he always does to Rose. At first he thinks that it might be too much, or too weird, or something else, but in the end, he decides he doesn’t care.

Cath only gets weird about it for the first two times or so. She’s not very good at accepting help, or gifts, or anything really, but Al is stubborn, so eventually she lets him. She’s lucky that he can’t ambush her to actually go asleep or drink water every once in a while. Or that’s what he tells her anyway.

She laughs at him, but Al’s mostly serious.

With everything that went down, there’s been a shift somewhere within Al, and now—he just cares a lot. It’s not that he didn’t care before, but it’s different now, more forceful, more urgent. Like some wall has melted down and now she’s right in there with his most important people. Rose and Scorpius, his family, Fawley.

He’s pretty sure that Cath knows he’s serious, too.

In turn, she helps him out with all his technology-related issues. She even explains to him how texting works—or tries to, at least. Al is pretty sure that he understands the concept, mostly, but that doesn’t mean he can actually do it. It seems awfully complicated.

“That’s because your phone is crap and doesn’t have a proper keyboard!”, Cath explains, quite, er, passionately. “Typing on this is torture.”, she adds, waving Al’s flip phone through the air.

Al fails at pressing the 1 three times at the right pace to produce a c and agrees. Also, he doesn’t really get any of the weird abbreviations she tries to explain to him.

“I think I’ll stick with letters.”, he mutters even though he’s long since found that they’re a severely impractical method of communication.

Cath buries her face in her hands theatrically. “You are an actual grandfather.”, she says.

“Yep”, Al replies, “I secretly slept with Jeffrey’s mum some twenty years ago.”

Jeffrey is one of their more regular customers, who came in last Tuesday, got smashed, and whined to Cath for over an hour about how he wasn’t ready to be a father, before his friend picked him up and very patiently explained to him that gay sex can’t make anyone pregnant.

The joke really is quite lame, but Cath splutters with laughter, anyway.

“His dad, you mean!”, she presses out between laughter, and Al has to laugh, too.

He tallies that up on the weird positive thinking thing Lucy started him on a couple of years ago. He doesn’t really do it consistently anymore, but every once in a while, he remembers, when something good happens, and he puts it down, anyway, just in his brain.

* * *

Al and the students at the _Hogshead_ get into their final spurt studying, too, and before he can blink, the NEWTs are here, and then Lucy’s graduating.

Al goes to the ceremony, of course, and so do Rose and Scorpius. Lucy’s parents are there, too, obviously, and then tons of other people, but that’s the part that Al pays attention to.

There’s no one there to come for Carolina, of course, so Al makes sure to clap extra loudly. So does Rose. Scorpius doesn’t, but that would probably be too much to expect.

Lucy hugs him tightly. “Thank you, Al.”, she says sincerely, “You’ve helped me so much.”

Al shrugs—as best as he can while she has his limbs hostage. “It’s not a big deal.”

Some of the other transfiguration students see him, too and wave at him. Some of them even come over and tell him about the exam.

Scorpius, stood at Al’s side, raises his eyebrows.

“I gave them some study tips”, Al says, “Remember I told you that Lucy asked me for help a little?”

That’s not quite that, and Scorpius probably can tell the difference, too, but he doesn’t call Al out on it.

Then, as Lucy graduates, so does Cath.

Even with all of the studying and all the work that’s been leading up to it, Al isn’t prepared for it. That’s not to say that he expected her to fail, obviously not, it’s just that he—kind of forgot the point of everything that she was doing. He didn’t think about it. Or maybe it would be more honest to say that he repressed it, but Al isn’t thinking about that either, so he doesn’t have to find the right term for it.

She invites even invites him to her graduation. Al goes, of course. He feels weird among all the proud parents and students that have put more dedication to one goal than Al probably has, ever, but he’s still there.

He says hi to Jack, Cath’s brother who still watches him with shifty eyes, and watches Cath walk and take a piece of paper.

The week after that, Cath quits her job at the _Nightowl._

Monica somewhat jokingly, but also somewhat not, offers to write her a reference for future bartending jobs that she might have.

Cath laughs as she declines.

She has a job lined up, she explains, with the people she interned for a while ago.

Al remembers that, in the sense that he remembers that they were a good company and that they had made some comment of the sort, that they wanted to hire her when she got her degree.

He even remembers reminding Cath about that when she was stressed and lonely and worried about everything.

Seems like he was right. Obviously. Cath works harder than anyone Al knows, period. Even Rose.

So Al congratulates her and wishes he the best. Because he does, really, wish for that. All the best for Cath.

They have fun on their last shift together. It’s busy, but not overly so, and everyone’s in a good mood now that exams are done.

Cath tells some of their more regular patrons that she’s leaving and one or two offer to buy her a drink. That’s not really allowed, obviously, so Cath has to decline, but Al can tell that she’s having fun, anyway.

“I’m going to miss this place.”, she tells Al, grinning widely.

Al huffs in response. “You say that, but just wait until you get reacquainted with that thing called a regular sleep cycle.”

Cath scoffs. “Like you can say anything about that.”

She’s right in that he absolutely can’t, he hasn’t had normal sleep patterns in, what, five years now? He’s too tired to count.

“Well, good thing then that I’m still going to be working here.”, he says, and tries not to make it sound awkward.

Cath hugs him tight before they go home that day, in the crack of dawn as always, just after having set up for coffee instead of booze.

The _Nightowl_ is a strange place if you think about it too much.

Al doesn’t. He just goes home. And then that’s that.

Not that Al wants it to be, of course, so maybe that means it isn’t. But Al has a lot of practice letting things be, more than he wants, really. And there is Fawley and there always is painting, isn’t there?

It’s just about enough to start a new sketch and try not to think about it too hard.

He’s painting the _Nightowl._ Or rather not the _Nightowl_ itself, but it’s barroom, the dance floor—all of it, the way it looks when he’s working, lights slightly dimmed, but not so much that he can’t see his own hands working.

Not that those are going in the painting, of course. Al doesn’t—he still doesn’t really like drawing people and he doubts he ever will. That’s a little bit of the reason why he draws the room without any of them in it. No customers, no Cath, no Al, but other than that, exactly the way it looks when he’s working usually.

The other part of the reason is that, well, it usually isn’t that empty, is it?

Maybe it is.

* * *

Al feels strange all summer. It’s not really a surprise, in a way. It’s the first summer he’s been in London since, well—since the very first summer after he graduated Hogwarts. It’s been a while.

So, obviously, Al’s not used to being here in this time of the year, and that’s why he feels off. It’s fine, it doesn’t really matter. He just needs to get used to it. He can do that.

He’s so caught up in that that he almost forgets to tell Monica that he’ll be here this summer at all, and when she asks him about it, she seems almost surprised, but pleasantly so.

“Alrighty, less recruiting for me then.” She sighs, dropping the cheerful tone. “It’s bad enough finding a replacement for Cath. There aren’t that many people that like to do night shifts and know how to bartend.”

Al’s pretty sure that Cath didn’t know how to bartend either, when she first started here, considering she’s been at it pretty much since she started university and he’s doesn’t know how she would have gotten any experience in bartending of all things before she turned eighteen, but bringing that up would be quite awkward.

“I suppose that just means you’ll have to help me with training, then!”, Monica concludes.

_Wait, what?_

“I—I’m not even a bartender.”, Al points out. He finds that is a very valid point.

“Oh, come on, how long have you been working here? You know the cocktail menu, don’t you?”

Al shrugs, a little uncomfortably. “Uh, yeah?”

He does know the cocktail menu. He’s watched Cath make every last thing on it at least a million times and also, he kind of needs to know it so he can stock the bar properly.

Monica smiles. “You’ll do fine, don’t worry. Strong support behind the bar is half the battle.”

Al lets himself smile back, even if he’s sure that it just looks tired.

If Monica says so, he’ll have to believe it.

* * *

Somewhere in between all of that, Fawley has to go to the hospital again. Nothing changes really, not even the dosage of the potions, but every time it happens, it feels a little heavier.

* * *

The new girl Al is supposed to help train as a bartender is new with a capital N, meaning she’s clearly never worked in a bar before, though she does seem to know her way around one, which makes one of them.

Al can count the number of times he’s been in a bar that wasn’t the _Nightowl_ on one hand.

So yeah, she starts out as kind of clumsy and with no hang whatsoever on the cash register, but as long as they don’t have a super busy night, that’s fine. Monica doesn’t schedule her for the busy nights the first two months, which is nice of her.

New girl’s name is Jessica, she’s nineteen and she doesn’t really know what she wants to do with her life, so she’s working a bit before she definitely has to find out.

That story makes Al almost laugh a little, but he doesn’t want to discourage her, so he holds back.

She’s—nice. Good with the more regular customers in the same way Cath was—good at easy conversation, not easily disturbed by the odd drunken come-on, funny in a way that wants people to buy more drinks. And she remembers their orders, usually.

Al knows that with Cath, it was maybe half put-on, cheerful in the sense that sometimes she was having fun, but at times a little at the expense of someone who didn’t quite get that, friendly, but also sometimes sarcastic in a way that wasn’t completely obvious. She was subtle, good at keeping her real thoughts concealed when she wanted to, only to conspiratorially roll her eyes at Al later.

There was always a certain irony to it.

With Jessica, Al isn’t so sure.

She does seem awfully eager in a way that seems entirely too sincere, at least to him. He doesn’t think he’s ever thrown himself so openly into something as she seems to with every one of her interactions, like it doesn’t matter to her if other people see that she cares.

It’s not like Al chases approval all the time, he thinks to himself, because if he did, he wouldn’t have ended up where he has, so much is clear, but still—he’s usually weary of the things he does, too weary to put all of his enthusiasm in them so openly, without any stipulations.

Jessica isn’t, or at least she does a good job acting like she isn’t.

Al fears for her a little.

So yeah, she’s nice, and because she’s Cath’s fill-in, or rather, her replacement, considering Cath isn’t coming back, Al works with her more often than not.

It’s not that he minds, really, it’s just that—maybe it unsettles him a little, the same way a lot of things seem to unsettle him recently. He tries not to let it get the best of him. He knows that he has phases in life where he gets restless, where the monsters beneath the surface can’t seem to settle. It passes, after a time. Usually.

Jessica is nice, but she isn’t Cath. It’s weird that she isn’t—or rather it’s not weird, because there can only be one Cath, but all still catches himself thinking that it isn’t. Like she should be doing things the exact way that Cath does them, even when it’s irrelevant stuff, like in which direction she moves her hand to wipe the counter when they pack away the bar stuff for the morning crew to make coffee instead of booze.

Another way she isn’t like Cath is how carefree she is, the lack of sarcasm aided by the relative lack of exhaustion.

Merlin, was Cath always exhausted.

Jessica seems like she’s a lot more built for this job, able to stay up the night without much of a problem. Or perhaps it’s just that she probably has the time to sleep during the day.

What Cath and Jessica have in common, though, is that they’re both relentlessly curious about Al. Well, not curious exactly—not like Carol, bless her long-graduated soul, who used to entertain herself by coming up with more and more ridiculous theories about Al’s dark secrets. None of them were as boring as Al’s actual secrets that are that he can totally do magic but never uses it for anything useful.

With Jessica, it’s not so much curiosity as that she, much in the same way that Cath used to, now that Al thinks about it, wants to get to know him. He recognises it more now than he did before, he thinks.

“How long have you been working here?”, she asks.

“Four years”, Al replies, “no, maybe five. Either one.” He’s too tired to calculate.

“Wow.”, she says, “That’s a really long time!”

Al can’t tell if she means that innocently or if she’s trying to imply something.

“Well”, he says, “As long as I don’t need to bring a cane to work, I think I can do a bit more.”

It takes her at least five seconds too long to get the joke.

When she does, she laughs hysterically.

 _Seriously_ , Al thinks, _too much enthusiasm._

* * *

“There are rumours.”, Rose informs Al as he hangs up his coat in Rose and Scorpius’ hall.

Al blinks at her, a little confused.

She’s having another exam soon, and she’s cramming, so Al’s here to make her take a break. Being a healer in training involves a lot of exams. Al didn’t know that before Rose was doing it. Then again, he never did want to become a healer, in training or otherwise.

“What rumours?”, he asks, “And since when do we care?”

The second question, as he asks it, perhaps isn’t that accurate. Rose used to always care a whole lot and Al suspects that she still does, secretly, even though she has a much better handle on it nowadays. Still, usually she at least tries not to.

“Not that kind.”, Rose says. She sits back down again among what feels like a million parchment rolls and at least a couple hundred books. Al’s not bothered by the sight, way too used to it by now, and marches straight into the kitchen to warm up the lunch he’s brought her.

The flat isn’t big enough for that bodily distance to be any kind of hindrance to a conversation.

“It’s about Scorpius!”, Rose calls after him.

“So?”, Al counters as he opens his bags. Sure, that it a bit more unusual, since Scorpius isn’t cursed with a last name—well, he is, just not in the way that Al and Rose are. “How’s that any different?”

“No, no, not like that.”, corrects Rose, “I mean—they’re not actually about Scorpius, but, you know, about his _thing._ ”

Al is so preoccupied with the carrots that for a second, he doesn’t understand what she means. “Oh”, he says, “ _Oh.”_

“Yeah.”, says Rose. She abandons her books again and comes to lounge next to him against the counter of her kitchen.

“Do they know, like, anything substantial about his plans?”, asks Al.

He doesn’t really know how to ask that in a smarter way. Honestly, he’s so out of the blue as far as, what, political strategy is concerned, he doesn’t even know if that would be a good thing or not.

Rose shrugs. “It’s kinda hard to say, you know? News travel fast and stuff, but I don’t think—” She pauses. “It’s just that by now, there’s quite a number of people who are in on it, you know? Like there’s McGonagall, obviously, and Scorpius’ old boss from the transportation department, and a few people from Improper Use of Magic, and Clarence Foster, the muggleborn’s rights activist—eventually some kind of talk starts, no matter about what, but Scorpius says there isn’t really anything about him, specifically, so that’s something.”

“Is it?”, Al finds himself wondering.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that, well, it’s not like anybody’s gonna catch wind of this and think, _Oh, I bet that guy working low-level jobs in the ministry somewhere is involved with that!,_ that’s just not how anything works.”

“Scorpius isn’t a nobody.”, Rose says, a little indignant.

Al gives her a look. “You know what I mean.”

Rose shrugs and folds her arms in front of her chest, but Al know that she’s understanding him perfectly.

“Besides”, he says, “he’s pretty far along now, isn’t he? At some point he’s gonna have to come out with it, anyway.”

“I suppose so.”, says Rose, looking up at the ceiling. “He keeps tweaking his text, but I’m not sure if that even does anything. I swear to you, he has thought of literally everything.”

“He’s a thorough guy.”, Al agrees.

Rose nods. They’re silent for a minute, each of them lost in their own thoughts.

“Do you think he’ll get Magical Law Enforcement to put it through to the Wizengamot?”, Al asks.

By now, courtesy of being Scorpius’ best friend, he knows that in order for Scorpius plan to become actual law, it has to be suggested by a department in the ministry of magic, and considering the subject matter, it can really only be the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. That’s also where Scorpius works, so that’s convenient. Kind of. Then it has to be argued and agreed upon in the Wizengamot before it goes to the minister of magic for approval. Only then can it become law.

All in all, that seems almost impossibly far away.

On the other hand, impossible things are kind of their speciality, even if it has been a while.

Well, Scorpius’ specialty. Al is just a helper to the madness, usually.

Rose sighs, looking up at the ceiling. “I think—“, she says, “I think, eventually. It’s certainly an uphill battle, but I guess—I just think he’s right, in many ways, you know? We see it at the hospital, too, sometimes—Muggleborn children that injure themselves with their own magic because their parents don’t know how to deal with it. It’s not that common, thankfully, but still—and we’ve all heard it at Hogwarts, haven’t we? Like Michael’s parents, they used to threaten all the time to just pull him out, didn’t they? I guess I didn’t really think about it at the time, but I’m sure it was in part because they don’t even have any proof of what we get up to there. And even mum—she almost never sees her parents.”

“I know.”, says Al, “But things have been like this for so long—it’ll take a lot of time to change that.”

“Yeah”, Rose says, “I suppose so.”

“Maybe rumours aren’t so bad, then. Puts the thought out there at least.”

* * *

July turns into August, and Al still feels weird.

Fawley has another check-up at St. Mungo’s that changes precisely nothing.

Al doesn’t remember Summer lasting so long. He just wants it to be cooler again. Then, he’ll be able to wear hoodies and feel normal again, in maybe not exactly that order. Scorpius can stop worrying, too.

He, Scorpius, that is, finishes his plan, meaning that he finishes planning everything he wants to change out in approximately a thousand rolls of parchment.

Al wonders how long it will take the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to actually read it, even if he knows that Scorpius has certainly done an impressive and very persuasive presentation.

He knows. Literally. He’s only been treated to that presentation about a thousand times.

That’s fine though, Al doesn’t mind. He knows what this is about, more the anxiety than the actual content, and there’s nothing expected there from him, no problems presented that he doesn’t know how to solve.

Other than—well.

“Are you okay?”

“Is everything all right?”

“What’s wrong?”

He asks every time.

Every time, Al says a variation of the same thing.

(“It is what it is.”

“Nothing you can do anything about.”

“Just life, you know.”)

Al, briefly, thinks about how those aren’t really the same questions at all, if you break them down, but yet they still are.

He can tell that Scorpius feels guilty about something, the way you can tell those things when you’ve known someone for a very long time the way they’ve known each other.

Al doesn’t know how to assuage that guilt.

It’s not even that he’s not answering honestly—he is. As honestly as he knows how to.

“Did you do something?”, he asks Scorpius once, because the thought suddenly occurs to him. It doesn’t seem very likely, and if Scorpius really did something that would harm Al recently, he figures he would have already figured that out. Or been confronted with the consequences or something.

Scorpius looks confused.

“You know,”, says Al, “something bad?”

Scorpius looks even more confused. “No? I don’t think so?”

“Oh.”, says Al, “You’re good, then.”

He’s not sure Scorpius entirely believes him.

Al could, of course, ask.

“Mate, what do you feel bad for?”

It wouldn’t be that hard. Maybe.

But Al knows that Scorpius is smarter in some ways, understands things that Al doesn’t, and Al doesn’t—Al isn’t sure if he wants to know.

Perhaps that’s stupid, considering he doesn’t even know what he doesn’t want to know, but—well, it’s ringing Al’s bells, the weird pully feeling in his gut that makes him want to run away, and so he doesn’t.

It does make him sad, though, because—

Well, Scorpius is Al’s best friend. He hates it when he wants to run away from him.

And he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

He doesn’t ask, either.

-

“How old are you?”, asks Jessica. She still hasn’t given up on her quest for endless Al trivia.

Al doesn’t really see how that is relevant to anything they’re doing.

Saying that might sound a little rude, though, so he tells her anyway. She probably just wants to be nice, it’s not her fault that he doesn’t do well with that intense kind of personality.

If that is even true. Lily is intense, but she’s his sister. Lucy is intense. Even Rose is intense, in her own way. Scorpius is certainly intense.

Still though—not the same thing as intensely cheerful. Al just doesn’t really know what to do with that, that’s the problem. It isn’t her fault.

“I’m twenty-two.”, he says.

To be fair, she’s probably just trying to make small talk. Like normal people do in that kind of situation.

“That means you started here when you were my age!”

Al can’t believe she remembers that.

“I suppose so.”

“I mean we’re not really that far apart in age though.”

Al makes a non-commital sound. He’s not sure what else he is supposed to say, agree perhaps? But it’s not like there really is anything to agree to.

“Let’s make another mojito, alright?”, he says instead.

* * *

In August, Rose takes her last exam.

She gets a certificate, and even a ceremony, but she’s a complete healer.

Training is over.

It surprises Al almost as much as with Cath. Rose has been training to be a healer for so long now, it’s started to become a familiar future, always just sort of in sight, but never quite there. Except now it is.

They celebrate with fire whiskey in Rose’ and Scorpius flat, the three of them, with Rose’ brother Hugo and Lucy, who is now old enough to drink that stuff, too, what a bizarre realisation.

Victoire and Molly and Freddie drop in to congratulate, because Rose does a lot better at keeping up with their immediate family than Al does, but that’s always been true, even when they were still children and there wasn’t technically any keeping up with to speak of.

Yeah, they have fire whiskey and the euphoria of a reached goal, but the celebration is still tiny and cozy, finds place comfortably in the small flat.

Al doesn’t really drink a lot, because after years and years of working with alcohol, he finds that he doesn’t like it much anymore, the associations of it all not really that fun anymore.

That’s fine, though, he can sit by and enjoy Rose’ happiness.

And he does, really.

But he also notices that for all the people that do come by—if only for a little, because they have responsible proper adult lives like Victoire with her shop and her _kids,_ Merlin—that it’s perhaps more telling who all doesn’t come.

James and Lily are an obvious one, of course, but there’s also Xannie and Dottie—but Dottie’s all over these days with her music and Xannie’s with her more often than not. Louis and Minnie are working in France, on a so-called temporary basis, and that, well.

That doesn’t leave that many of them. Freddie’s married to _Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes_ , of course (or at the very least to the prospect of not disappointing his father, Al supposes, though maybe that’s unfair, he isn’t actually close enough to Freddie to tell), and then Vic and Molly are pretty much settled here with the boutique and the bakery respectively, and Hugo’s still here, too, though maybe not for too long, so that’s that—and well. Isn’t it sort of weird how few of them are actually still here? Even in the country on a semi-regular basis? Sure, people do that, go away from home, but sure this rate must be—let’s say, at the very least somewhat irregular.

It must be.

But they’re all gone, somehow.

Not gone. Not gone, of course.

Never gone. Just—away.

Al can’t imagine being away, he couldn’t anyway, because there’s Fawley, and Fawley needs him and—London, the city is so pretty at night and Al doesn’t know how to be lost anywhere else if he can’t be lost here anymore.

He’s so lost.

He doesn’t want to be anymore, but that—that’s not how it works, but why isn’t it?

Why are they all going away? Everyone is away and everyone is going away, everyone is always going away and Al doesn’t understand, and he isn’t—he doesn’t want to—

Fawley needs him here.

But Fawley’s going away, too, isn’t he? Al knows that, but—he can’t—

And Cath’s gone away now, too, and it just makes sense, because that’s what happens in life, but Al doesn’t—he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t, he won’t, he can’t—but what can he even do against something like that? He’s powerless in the face of time and life and humans and all those things you’re supposed to do and want that he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want them, and he doesn’t understand them, and he doesn’t understand wanting them—

But everyone does, want them and it makes him so, so—so bloody lonely.

That’s why he’s here, isn’t he? Because everyone’s moving on, always, or at the very least moving somewhere. Rose is—moving where she wants to be, who she wants to be, isn’t that awesome? Yeah, it is, of course, but—shit, he’s being a bad friend, isn’t he?

Yes, he’s the worst friend, he should be happy for her, it’s not her fault that she gets it the same way everyone gets it, that Scorpius gets it, too, that they get it together, because they’re _normal_ and they know how to exist in the world like normal people, and Al _doesn’t_ and—

“Al?”, asks Scorpius. He’s sitting next to Al even though he isn’t very sure when that happened or why, “Al, are you doing alright?”

Al isn’t doing alright, and it’s perhaps the worst possible time to ask that question, because right when he says it, Al bursts into tears.

Well, he doesn’t—it’s not that loud or dramatic, but he—well, they’re coming and Al can’t seem to do anything to stop them.

“Al?”, Scorpius said again, voice alarms. Al feels his friend shifting next to him, his stiff movements just as familiar as his scent.

“I think”, Al tries to say, but it comes out creaky and wet, “I might have had a bit too much.”

Scorpius shifts again. “Uh, do you—do you think you’ll throw up or something?”

Scorpius isn’t used to drunk Al. That makes sense, Al isn’t used to drunk Al, either. He doesn’t think he’s been drunk before. It’s never really held any appeal for him on his own and, well. Scorpius isn’t allowed to drink and Rose is a control freak, and as a group of three, peer pressure wasn’t really particularly high to actually do anything, so. Now Al is drunk, and it’s not even on purpose.

He hasn’t even been drinking that much. Working in a bar, he thinks he has a decent grasp of what much is. He doesn’t have a lot of tolerance, so much is clear.

“No”, Al says, and it still comes out like a bloody sob, what the hell is wrong with him?

“Let’s uh—“ Scorpius shifts again and this time it’s definitely away from Al, and it doesn’t make any sense at all, but Scorpius can’t go, he just can’t, so Al grabs his wrists and holds it so tight that his nails must be digging into Scorpius’ skin, but Al knows that he can’t let go, he can’t because—

“Don’t go away!”, Al says, or something, and shit, now he’s really full-on crying.

“I—“, Scorpius is quiet for a moment, confused, probably, but at least he isn’t going away anymore.

Except that he totally is, because he’s been for a while now, isn’t he? And Al isn’t even sure when that started or why or how, but it is happening, isn’t it? Because everything is always happening, whether Al wants it to or not, because apparently what he wants or not doesn’t really matter at all to the universe.

He starts to sob harder. “You have to stay here”, he tries to say, but he isn’t sure how much of it translates through all the snot, either way Scorpius wraps his arms around Al’s shoulders a little awkwardly, then tighter.

“It’s fine”, he says, “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere—”

That’s not true, but Scorpius doesn’t lie to Al, ever, he doesn’t know how to. Al knows that. And it’s not a lie, it’s just—Al knows that it isn’t true either, because—

He must convey at least some of that, somehow, because Scorpius is responding to it.

“No, Al, no I’m not going anywhere, I’m right here.”

He strokes over Al’s back, helplessly, and Al’s chest blooms with embarrassment.

Why is he like that? What is he even doing?

“Hey, hey”, someone else says on his other side. It’s Rose. Al is hiding in Scorpius’ shoulder, but he knows anyway, by her voice and the inflection and her touch.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know”, Scorpius says, “He just started crying, and he’s—well I wanted to come get you, but he’s saying I can’t go away.”

Rose touches Al’s shoulder lightly, the one that isn’t perched between Scorpius’ and the back of the couch.

“Hey Al”, she says, “It’s alright, you’re safe here.”

“I think he’s drunk.”, says Scorpius.

“Oh. Did he drink that much?” Rose again.

“No”, another voice cuts in, “He’s just a lightweight. And a sad drunk, apparently.”

It’s quiet for a moment, and Al thinks that maybe he can start to control himself a little. And not be so bloody—wait, no, that’s not how controlling himself works.

“I’m sorry”, he gets out, and it sounds almost like a regular person, “I don’t know why I—”

“It’s alright”, Rose says immediately, “you’re all good.”

“I’m ruining your celebration”, Al points out, in his opinion quite reasonably.

“No, you’re not”, says Rose, “It’s late, anyway.”

Al has lost track of time, but she must be right. Lucy and Hugo have gone home a while ago.

“Drink a bit of water, alright?”, says Rose, and pushes a glass of just that into Al’s hands. Al almost drops it, but he doesn’t. He makes himself take a few sips.

He’s not sure if it helps any, because it’s only a few seconds later that he’s crying again, this time for no reason at all, prompted by nothing at all, and it doesn’t make any bloody sense, but he can’t stop it.

Scorpius doesn’t let go of him, holds him all through it.

Al isn’t sure if it’s because he said he couldn’t leave or because he can’t move anyway, too restricted with the way Al is clinging to him in addition to all his usual restrictions. He’s pretty sure he apologises a bunch of more times, because his behaviour is kind of ridiculous, for the most part, but he can’t seem to stop it.

He isn’t sure how long it takes, in a way it feels like hours, but surely it can’t be, can it?

Every time he thinks it’s done, that surely now all the feelings have found their way outside of him and there’s nothing left to still come out of him, the old wave of feelings creates a ripple of new ones and the cycle starts all over again and again and again and again until it doesn’t anymore.

“Not going away”, Scorpius says, mumbles every time he moves.

It settles the terrible feeling in Al’s chest as much as it upsets it, because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t know what’s happening.

Al doesn’t know how long it’s been when he feels safe to look up again. He lets go of Scorpius, just a little, because surely that can’t have been comfortable. He tries to gather his senses again, and this time it works, kind of.

Better than before.

“I’m sorry”, he says again.

Rose hands him another glass of water. Or perhaps it’s the same glass of water. It’s not like that really matters, anyway.

Al takes it.

They’re quiet for a while after that still, quiet together in the way that isn’t a gap but an action in itself.

“Do you need to talk about something?”, Rose asks eventually.

Al—Al doesn’t bloody know. Probably, yeah. he does. But as he racks his brain he can’t come up with a single thing that he can tell them, nothing that makes sense put in actual words outside of his erratic brain, nothing to start with.

But he doesn’t want them to think that he’s keeping a secret either, that he doesn’t trust them. Because maybe he is, but even if that’s true, that’s not the reason he is. Except that he doesn’t know the reason either.

“I’m sorry.”, he repeats again, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

He almost starts crying again, but he doesn’t and the night doesn’t offer explanations for anybody.

* * *

“Do you have another job?”, Jessica asks him one day out of nowhere.

Al doesn’t miss a beat as he rounds up empty glasses.

“Why do you ask? Do you want to get one?”

He’s almost gotten used to her ceaseless questions by now, but only almost. He’s still tripping up at all the ways she isn’t Cath all the time, even though that isn’t fair and doesn’t make sense. It’s not like she knows, though, so maybe that’s fine.

She shrugs. “Maybe. So, do you?”

“Yeah”, Al says. Because he does. It just doesn’t feel like that much these days.

“Really?”. Jessica asks, so surprised it makes Al wonder why she asked in the first place. “But you work such weird hours!”

“So do you!” Al pushes her a little in the side, not hard enough for it to have a real impact, and immediately hopes he didn’t make her uncomfortable. It was a friendly sort of gesture between two people that aren’t even really friends, but personal boundaries are still a thing and he should really be more respectful of that.

Jessica doesn’t seem that bothered.

“Well, yeah, but at least mine are consistent! I work nights and evenings sometimes, but you do all of that and then sometimes you do afternoon, too, and there’s no real rhyme to it!”

She’s right, Al works afternoons too now, something about the schedule changing with new staff. He did that, too, before, but not nearly as much.

“Well”, Al says, “I’m pretty flexible.”

She stares at him. Then she comes closer and whispers: “You don’t do like, porn or something?”

Al can feel his cheeks start to flame and he takes a step back.

“What? No, I meant timewise, why would you even—how does that even make sense?”

She doesn’t look nearly as flustered as he feels, even though her cheeks do turn a little red.

“Well, I don’t know, it’s your fault for being so cryptic!”

Is it? Al doesn’t really think so. But then again, he also doesn’t get why she would think that kind of thing about him. Does he give of that kind of vibe? Is there even a vibe for that? And if there is, why would he have it? He’s never—

“I’m an assistant”, he clarifies, figuring that’s about as precise as he can get.

“Assistant at what?”

“Assistant of my boss.”, Al says, thinking of Fawley. What a weird thing to call him. Boss.

“Obviously”, Jessica says, “But what do you do?”

Al shrugs. “All kinds of things. I write letters for him, I go buy stuff. Make food. Clean, sometimes.” _Get him out of bed,_ he adds in his head, but he won’t say that out loud. It’s too private.

“Hm.”, Jessica says, “So you’re like the secretary-slash-housekeeper?”

Al shrugs. “I suppose you could call it that.”

You could and it wouldn’t really be very accurate, but he doesn’t want to get into that.

“That sounds kind of boring.”

“You’d be surprised.”, Al says. There are a lot of things that could be said about Fawley, but that he’s boring certainly isn’t a common complaint.

“Well”, she says, “Should I get into it then? What you do?”

Al imagines Jessica, young and enthusiastic and so very cheerful hitching her entire life on some old person that will probably d—that it very sick.

“No”, he says, “You probably shouldn’t.”

* * *

Al goes home and he goes to work again.

He takes walks with Fawley, but they don’t go very far, so it’s mostly around Soho Square Gardens, where Al and Rose used to go running, then where Al used to go running on his own. He doesn’t so much, anymore. He just doesn’t feel like he has the time for it, like he should leave Fawley on his own more than he has to.

He’s still fine at walking for the most part, Fawley, that is.

Al keeps finding that strange for some reason, like walking should be the first thing to go, but it isn’t. It’s Scorpius symptom—Scorpius’ most prominent symptom, so to Al it’s like it should be the same for Fawley.

That’s not true, of course, because people are different and symptoms are different, and those differences are more than mere details.

The thing is, this isn’t going like it’s going for Scorpius anyway. Scorpius might not walk much anymore, or far, but he’s also not—well, there’s no timeline there on him either, not more than there is on Al.

With Fawley—

No.

* * *

Fawley doesn’t paint much anymore.

That’s not quite true, because he does, still make art, features of people in his sketchbook, tiny pieces of a person picked up and put into an image like he always does.

But not actual oil portraits, none of the powerful actual people that talk and act and have their own personalities.

“Let’s go make some art.”, he’ll say to Al, anyway, and they’ll sit in the art room together and Al will do something on one of his works, because somehow, even as everything in his life seems to culminate to—he doesn’t even know, Al still has things to paint.

He does a series of sorts for a while, on empty rooms—rooms that should be full, except without all he people. The one of the inside of the _Nightowl_ is the first one, but he also makes one of the Ravenclaw common room, then there’s one of King’s Cross, and the kitchen of the burrow.

And it fascinates him, and he lets that fascination play out, but then it’s just that, played out and he gets bored again.

Bored is perhaps not really the right word. In all truth, he doesn’t have time to be bored. He has work and he has art, and he cooks, and he takes care of Fawley and he sees his friends a couple of times a week and his parents on weekends—his life is full enough.

But in another way, bored might be exactly the right word, because most of that somehow doesn’t feel real anymore—no, it is real, It definitely is real, very real, it just—he doesn’t know either.

Sometimes, he gets his phone out and stares at Cath’s contact page for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, before he puts it away again.

He figures that it’s a summer thing. He isn’t used to being here in the summer, so he’s—he’s having a summer hole. Or something. If that is a thing. Seasonal depression, except it’s the other way around. That makes sense, right?

* * *

The last Sunday of August, Al goes to have dinner at his parents’ house, the same way he does every Sunday. It’s a little different though, this time around, because both his siblings are actually at home for once.

Al is actually looking forward to it, which is perhaps the biggest testament to how long it’s been since they’ve all been together.

Like every time before he goes, he reminds Fawley to call him if anything is up. It’s not a perfect system and it still leaves Al uneasy, but he doesn’t really have any better ideas, anyway. He just has to hope that it’ll be fine anyway.

That’s really all he has to hope for these days.

Al feels himself slip away into himself for most of the dinner. He knows that he shouldn’t be doing this, but it’s just too hard to always be present, and with Lily and James being here for one, and having so many stories to share, it’s easier to make his own presence smaller, to pull a little inside himself instead of making an effort to be all there. He just doesn’t seem to have the energy for that, lately, and some things, like this dinner, seem to fall victim to that.

He does try to pay attention, though, mostly. If he zones out while James brags about his last trial, nobody has to know. Literally. It’s not like his brother leaves a lot of silence for questions, anyway.

So far, so normal.

At least until they get to dessert. Dad has made the treacle tart that Al likes so much. That’s strange, it’s usually reserved for momentous occasions in their house, but really, it’s been quite a normal dinner, mostly. Except that Lily and James are both here. Al supposes that counts as a momentous occasion these days.

“Children.”, Dad says in right that moment, like he has some kind of big announcement to make. It doesn’t have a lot of impact though, because James is currently poking at Lily’s ribs and she’s squirming and screaming, trying to get it to stop.

“Children!”, Al’s mum calls, loudly, and they instantly stop.

Dad grimaces. “Thank you, Ginny.”

“What’s up?”, Lily says, pulling her legs underneath her body on her chair.

“I, uh, yeah—“, says Dad, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

 _Oh,_ Al thinks, a little distantly, _this is actually going to be an announcement._

“I didn’t want to say anything before, but now that we are all here, I guess it’s the right time—There are going to be some changes”

“You’re not getting divorced, are you?”, James blurts out.

Four pairs of eyes turn towards him.

“No”, Dad says, “Of course not. Why do you even—”

James shrugs, defensively. “I don’t know. Lots of people do.”

“Well”, says Mum, “We’re not, so you don’t have to worry about that, Jamie.”

James averts his eyes and directs them to the table, where his hands are harassing each other.

“Alright”, Dad says, clearly thrown off his rhythm, “Nothing like that, nothing—nothing bad. Just different.”

There’s a pause.

“So.”, Lily says, “What are the news, then?”

She sounds—strangely casual about it, like whatever it is, it couldn’t be that big of a deal. That’s weird, considering whatever it is, it clearly is a very big deal.

Then again, Al isn’t exactly losing his mind right now, either. And Lily has different focuses now.

“Come September”, Dad says finally, “I’m going to step back as the Head of the Auror Bureau.”

_Oh. That kind of change, then._

“Oh”, says Lily.

“What.”, says James. It doesn’t even sound like a question.

Dad sighs, and at once Al can see the wrinkles on his forehead and the grey interspersed in the wild black hair Al knows so well from looking in the mirror himself.

His father has never struck him as old before, he was always just his father—this kind of rapid shift in perception—looking at someone and suddenly seeing something different—that shouldn’t be allowed.

“This has been coming for a while now. I’ve been catching dark wizards all my life, and—well, ever since Ron—”

He quietens.

Uncle Ron was an Auror, too, before he died. He wasn’t in full-time anymore, not since Rose was born, helping Uncle George in the joke shop instead and raising his children, but whenever Al’s father had a particularly tough case, he called him in anyway. For advice. For backup.

Al’s never really thought about it before, it’s just how things were. Just how things used to be. Strange how that goes, isn’t it? And Al’s suddenly gripped by a terrible kind of understanding, followed by a surge of, well, empathy.

“In any case, it’s time.”, Dad continues.

There are some things that are hard to do alone. And his father, well. It’s been a few years. Perhaps maybe it really is time, has been time for a while now, even if none of them were aware of it. Maybe he wasn’t even himself.

“But what else are you—“, James starts.

“I’ve been speaking to Professor McGonagall”, says Dad, “I’m going to start as the new Teacher for Defense against the Dark Arts this September.”

Al huffs a laugh, a little too loud to go ignored.

His family stares back at him. Al suddenly realises that it’s his first reaction to the whole news. Oops.

“I think that’s a great idea, Dad.”, he says quickly, “I’m sure it’ll be brilliant.”

His father is still looking at him, like there’s something he doesn’t quite understand. Al doesn’t really fancy bringing up that he just finds it a little funny because just a few months ago, McGonagall offered Al, of all people, a similar position. They would’ve been colleagues. Well, in a couple of years, anyway. He just smiles instead, and hopes it looks at least half-sincere. Which it is. Mostly. No, totally.

“So—“, says Lily, “Does that mean you’re going to move to Hogwarts?”

“Well, yeah”, says Dad, “That kind of comes with the job.”

Right.

“What about Mum, then?”, asks James.

“Mum”, says Mum, “will go with him, of course.”

_Oh. So that’s—kind of even a bigger thing._

“Oh”, Lily says, and suddenly she seems a little shaken, too. “So you’re leaving—here?”

“Not really, Lily-Lu”, Dad says, “It’s just up in Scotland, only a floo away from London, or a quick apparition.”

“Right”, says Lily, clearly still a little disturbed.

 _Besides,_ Al adds silently, _you’re way farther away, anyway, so what does it matter?_

“What about this place?”, James asks, “Are you just going to—sell it, or something?”

Harry and Ginny share a look.

“This place”, Ginny says, “is a little tricky, property-wise. There’s a lot of magic here, and it’s very attuned to the people that live here—There’s the Fidelius, of course, and we are only some of the secret keepers for it, and even beyond that, your father is the legitimate heir of the Blacks—a house like this remembers these things.”

“So you won’t”, James says, in that tone of his, that isn’t quite hostile, but it’s getting there, “But you would, if you could?” His tone rises and at the end of the sentence, it’s almost shrill.

“We won’t.”, says Harry, with a note of finality. “We’ll keep this house, and you’ll always be welcome back here, just like you’ve always been.” He pauses. “It’ll just be empty for a bit, until someone needs it again, for whatever reason.”

James, for some reason, doesn’t seem satisfied by this. Al doesn’t really get hat his problem is, but he never has before, so that’s no surprise.

“Al could live here.”, he says, flippantly.

Al blinks, once, twice. But no, he hasn’t completely checked out of reality. James actually just said that.

“Al”, he says, mimicking his brother’s flippant tone, “has his own flat where he already lives.”

“That isn’t your flat.”, James says, which is—technically correct, but doesn’t it make Al’s blood boil.

“Well”, he says, “Al still lives there, and Al happens to like it that way.”

James looks at him like Al’s just being difficult for no reason, when literally the opposite thing is happening.

Al doesn’t have the patience for this.

“Listen”, he says, “If it’s really that important to you, you can live here, can’t you? I’m sure Mum and Dad wouldn’t mind.”

James looks indignant. “I’m not—”

“You’re not here, I’m aware, you’re doing other things than looking after an old house. So am I.”

“It’s not like we’re never coming back, either.”, Dad says. “We’ll be here in the summer and for Christmas—frankly you won’t even notice that we aren’t here the rest of the year.”

James huffs. “Alright”, he says reluctantly, like he has any kind of real say over the matter.

“So”, Lily says, “So?”

“That’s it, really.”, says Mum.

There is silence for a bit, like everybody’s processing or something.

“Okay, then”, says Al eventually, “Do we have any more tart?”

He ignores the looks that James shoots him. He hasn’t understood that for a very long time, so he won’t start being bothered by it now.

* * *

“Does it really not bother you at all?”, asks Lily later that week. They’re meeting at Florean Fortescue’s for late summer ice cream before Lily has to go back to the US for the new academic year.

“What, about mum and dad?”

“Yeah”, says Lily, licking her spoon.

“Not really”, says Al, “I think it makes sense, for Dad. If I—well if Scorpius—” the comparison doesn’t really apply, so Al drops it. “With everything that happened, are you really surprised? And Dad has been a saviour for so long—I think he deserves a break. And Mum’s always been one to move around, so.” He shrugs. “Why not?”

“Well, yeah”, says Lily, “But still. Don’t you think it’s strange? Like they’re moving on or something.”

Al shrugs.

 _They_ are, he wants to say.

Truth is, it does feel a bit strange. But not stranger than Rose finishing her training or Scorpius not quite single-handedly trying to change the muggleborn laws. Or Lily moving to bloody America, for that matter. It’s strange, but those things happen.

“Don’t see how it matters, really.”

Lily drops her spoon. “Of course it matters! It’s our parents, you have to care about what they do.”

“Yeah, I mean, I do, obviously. I just meant it doesn’t really matter if I think it’s strange or not. I don’t own them, they can do whatever they want.”

“We’re still their children. I think we’re entitled to our opinion.”

“You’re always entitled to your opinion, Li-Lu, I just think it doesn’t matter. We’re all adults now. It’s not like they have to consult our sensitivities all the time anymore. Besides, it literally doesn’t affect you. You’re never even here, especially during the school year.”

Lucy purses her lips, then bits on it. “Yeah”, she says quietly, “I mean, I suppose so. It still makes me feel weird. Doesn’t it make you feel weird?”

Al sighs. That’s a question and a half and he doesn’t really know how honestly he wants to answer it.

“Everything makes me feel weird”, he says, “so who’s to tell, really.”

Lily laughs, takes it as the joke he means it to be. He’s also kind of serious, though, which is the sad thing.

* * *

As he goes home, he thinks about how maybe he was lying to her. Not lying, not really, he meant it, he thinks, but—

Maybe he’s too tired lately to tell what he’s really thinking, what is strange and what isn’t what only matters today or what will still be a problem tomorrow.

He shakes his head. This is getting too complicated. This is why he doesn’t do that, usually, this is why he doesn’t turn over words in his head, it just changes everything into a weird mass where he can’t be sure of anything.

It’s just the summer. He gets to feel strange for the summer and he’ll be fine again soon enough.

If he gets out the stupid phone again, for a conversation he can’t have, nobody has to know.

* * *

Summer ends. Lily goes back over the great pond, and so does, James presumably, no matter his barely justified misgivings about their childhood home staying empty and Al’s parents go to Hogwarts. Again. Differently this time though.

Al comes by Grimmauld Place the weekend before they leave as he always does. He brings dessert with him, this time, because he isn’t sure his father would make some. He thinks it should definitely be there, though, the situation warrants it.

“So”, he says, in a lull of conversation, “Does that mean I have to come to Hogwarts for Sunday dinner now?”

Harry and Ginny look at each other.

“I’m not sure—“, Ginny starts.

“Let’s just do it here.”, Harry says, “We’ll just come here to do it.”

Al grins. It would have been a funny image, showing up in the Great Hall at the teacher’s table to have dinner with his family. He’s kind of glad he doesn’t have to actually do it, though. He figures that might be a little awkward.

He wonders if McGonagall has said anything to his dad about her job proposition to his dad. Probably not.

Al’s pretty sure that if she had, he’d already have heard about it. He’s been the weird kid that throws away his life and talents for a while now, just long enough that his family is kind of used to it. Al still thinks that they probably won’t understand how he could turn up his nose at such an opportunity.

And he gets why they think that, he really does. It’s strange for him, too, seeing everybody moving on like that—his friends, even his parents—while he stays in the same place. But he knows that he can’t leave where he is right now, he won’t, he doesn’t want to, he can’t. He also doesn’t want to argue about it. Life’s exhausting enough without people trying to change his mind about stuff he’s sure of.

“Guess that’ll make James happy, too.”, he says idly.

His father looks back at him and narrows his eyebrows in thought.

“Does it make you happy?”, he asks.

“I—Uh”, says Al very articulately, but honestly, what does that question even mean? “You know that I like coming here Sundays.”

“Yeah, yeah”, says Dad, “It’s just—this is a big change for our family and you haven’t said much about it.”

Oh. It’s one of those conversations. They haven’t had one of those in a while.

Al taps his fingers on the table. “There’s not really a lot to say, is there? Hogwarts is great. I get what you meant about”—he struggles a bit—“it being time to change things. Lucy’s out now, so there’s no place for any weird accusations of favoritism and Mum—well, she’s fine with it, so—” He fades out.

“It’s still a big change”, Mum says. “and we kind of sprung it on you, because it had to be kept under wraps for a while, for security reasons.”

Al shrugs. “I’m an adult. It’s not like you need my permission or anything. It’s not really my place to be upset about anything.”

“Alright”, says Dad, “Just checking.”

* * *

Rose and Scorpius are even more worried about him, after the incident. It makes sense, Al supposes, he kind of freaked out on them there.

So they hover around him a little, make for careful questions when they hang out, testing looks.

Al gets it, he really does. It’s just that he really know what to do about it.

It’s like they’re waiting for him to get out with it, to start talking. Al is kind of waiting for that, too. It’s just that, now that he’s sober things have stopped feeling immediately terrible, and go back to weirdly looming in corners that he doesn’t care to look.

So, ultimately, he doesn’t even know what to tell them, even if he wants to.

“It’s the summer”, he says to Rose eventually, “It makes me feel all kinds of weir.”

And he thinks she believes him, almost as much as he believes himself, which isn’t all that much if he’s honest, and she draws her own conclusions from that.

Scorpius however, definitely doesn’t, believe him, that is. He doesn’t ask any further, either though, because he never does, because he never tries to be pushy with Al.

Al kind of wishes he would. Maybe that would feel less lonely.

* * *

Summer really does end, and Al is still bored.

“You have to put in a bit more mint”, he says to Jessica. She formally completed training a bit ago, but that doesn’t mean that she’s perfect at everything yet. Not that Al minds much.

“Oh, yeah, right”, she says, crunching her eyebrows together as she adds the perfect amount.

“Well done.”, says Al appreciatively.

Jessica hands the drink to the customer, before she turns back to beam at him. It’s almost blinding.

“Why didn’t you become a bartender?”, she asks, “You’re so good at this stuff!”

Al’s head jerks a little. “Uh, I guess this was the free position when I applied, so that’s what I ended up doing.” He gestures around where he’s standing.

“Oh”, she says clearly not satisfied with that response. Al has to give it to her, it’s not very interesting, but that’s because he just isn’t a very interesting guy. Besides, it’s completely true. He wasn’t really picky about his job prospects back then. He isn’t even sure if he knew what the difference between a bartender and a barback was.

“You could’ve become one now, though”, Jessica argues, “When that other girl left.”

Al shrugs. He really struggles to see her point. “Then you wouldn’t have your job now”, he says patiently.

Jessica beams even harder. It’s another attack of too much enthusiasm. Al seriously doesn’t know where she pulls that from.

“Besides, why fix what’s not broken?”

Jessica shrugs. “Change of pace, maybe?” She drums her fingers against the bar in the same way Al does sometimes. “Well, at least now I know you’re not out to steal my job from me.”

Al huffs and laughs dryly. “Not a chance.”

“Yeah?”, she says, “It’s so fun though. And you’d be good at it. You already know everything you’d need to do.”

“I already know everything I need to with what I’m doing right now, too. And I like it better, anyway.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I don’t have to talk to people so much.”

“Oh.”

She doesn’t seem to know what else to ask there. That’s a new one.

Al realises that he might sound a bit—stand-offish.

“You know—“, he says a little awkwardly, “just, you know, less dealing with drunk crying and stuff…”

That’s not really true. If the drunk crying gets really bad, Al has to try and intervene just as much as Cath does. Uh, did. Just as much as Jessica does. It sounds a bit less bad though.

“I guess.”, she says.

Al sighs. He’s forgotten how long the early morning hours can get, sometimes, when there aren’t a lot of people out partying and four a. m. stretches it even for those who like to go out on a Wednesday.

They’ve been empty for half an hour now, and Al is tired, tired to the bone.

Poor Jessica is still trying to make small talk.

“What are you doing today when you get home?”

Al yawns. “Sleep.”, he says, “Hopefully.” He frowns. “Aren’t you?”

“Uh, yeah”, she says, “Of course, I mean.”

“Really, though”, Al says, nervous energy strumming through him. He’s been too conditioned to look out for this kind of thing, by now, he thinks, it’s almost a little too much. “It’s important to get enough sleep, especially if you’ve been working all night. I know it might seem—I don’t know, unnecessary, or something, but no matter how busy you are, if you don’t sleep, it’ll mess you up.”

He meets her eye and she is already looking back.

He watches her swallow. He thinks she might be blushing a bit, which is weird.

“Uh, yeah”, she says, “You’re right. Of course.”

There’s a weird tension in the air, and Al realises that this time it’s because he’s being too intense. He smiles a little lamely, trying to ease it.

“Are you, like, speaking from experience?”, she asks.

Al’s smile turns from slightly forced to sheepish. “Kind of.”, he says, but that’s been a while, and it’s not why he’s so attuned to it either, not why he said something. “But mostly it’s uh”—he thinks of Rose, age fourteen, but he doesn’t want to tell Jessica about her, too complicated to mix those two things—“Cath was really bad about it, so I try to look out for that stuff.”

“Oh.”, Jessica says, voice a little smaller, turned down from her two-thousand watt from before.

“Just be careful about it, alright?”, says Al, “I mean, I don’t know what else is going on with you, but it’s always important to take care of yourself.”

“Yeah”, she says, again, “Yeah of course.” She sounds like she’s a little far away. Perhaps the late hour is finally starting to get to her, too. Maybe fatigue can affect her enthusiasm after all.

Al sighs and stares at the clock. “I think we can start cleaning up in about half an hour.”

* * *

Restless energy burns underneath his bones that day as he leaves the _Nightowl._ He has the urge to walk around the city for the rest of the night, lose himself in the play between night and shadows in the places that are never quite still but perfectly lonely in spite of it. He doesn’t though, because he has to go check on Fawley.

He doesn’t have to, of course, but if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to think about anything else. And if something did happen—oh well.

Fawley is perfectly fine, when Al gets home, asleep, but that’s normal. It’s kind of the middle of the night. Not that that stops Al, really. He’s too fired up to go to bed. Fired up from what, he doesn’t really know. He’s just been at the bar, worked a semi-stressful shift with a too enthusiastic co-worker. None of that warrants the energy coursing through Al’s entire system, making his hands vibrate. There hasn’t even been anything out of the ordinary that’s happened.

The feeling doesn’t care, because it’s still there.

Al kind of wants to put up a new canvas, start something, make something that’ll get all of these weird emotions out. It’s—well, it’s just the thing that he does, isn’t it?

But it doesn’t work, won’t work, not this time, not today.

He just—He’s tired and bored, and exhausted and he doesn’t—there’s nothing—there’s nothing to paint anymore. Nothing satisfactory, anyway.

Al wants to rip his hair out. Or scream, perhaps, or destroy something.

It’s the middle of the night, though, and Fawley is sleeping, and so is Mrs. Marlow, most likely, so no.

Al doesn’t rip his hair out. He doesn’t scream either, he doesn’t destroy anything, and he doesn’t disappear into the night until he doesn’t feel like a person anymore.

Instead, he cleans.

Well, tidies, kind of. More like picks up a couple of things, puts them down in another place. Does a couple of cleaning charms when his eyes fall upon something particularly dusty.

There’s no real system or purpose behind it and it probably doesn’t really do anything for the perpetually messy state of affairs, but it makes him feel like he’s doing something, sort of.

He rips open one of the cupboards, for no real reason at all, and starts looking through the boxes in there.

It’s mini-sized art, mostly, properly stored and labelled in boxes, kept alive by darkness and magic. That’s maybe one of the most important things that Fawley’s actually taught him right away—how to enchant a painting so it doesn’t start looking bad after a while that it’s been in a closet without anyone looking at it.

Al doesn’t really have a desire to view all of his past failures, but there’s a lot of Fawley’s stuff in here, too, so he figures it’s fine, probably.

He stumbles over old sketchbooks, eventually, and that is always a favourite of his. He likes art, obviously, he likes oil paintings and he kind of hates watercolours, but not in the way that means that he doesn’t like looking at it. Sketchbooks, though, sketchbooks have something special about them that is more vulnerable, something that admits that it isn’t finished, or perfect, more private than a finished work ever feels if you can read it correctly.

He hesitates for a second but decides that he’s not going to look at Fawley’s old ones without him knowing, even though every time he’s asked before he’s always been allowed to look.

That leaves his own ones.

Al’s had quite a number of them over the years, even if they dwindle compared to Fawley’s sizable collection, but not all of them are here, some probably still in some cupboard at his parents house, not to mention all the little sketches and doodles interspersed with his old school essays and notes, that will probably stay lost forever, because honestly, Al can’t see himself ever sorting through all of that.

Every sketchbook he’s had since he was eighteen is here, though, neatly labelled with a date on each page. Well, almost each page. Fawley’s wrangled Al into doing that, writing down when he drew what and why and what it was called, and if he made another version of it, because ‘otherwise you will forget!’

Al didn’t believe him, but he adopted the habit anyway.

Browsing through the pages, he still doesn’t think he’s forgotten anything, exactly, but it does make him remember stuff that he might not have without it. Every page, every image has associations, feelings with it, makes Al remember what he was eating that day, what he was thinking, how he was feeling, why he did what he did and what he was trying to do. It’s like a little window to somewhere else, makes him feel close to where he hasn’t been in a while.

At the same time though, it also makes him feel further away from it, tells him how much his views have changed, more literally than figuratively.

He starts with the earliest of the sketchbooks, from when he’d just started living with Fawley, and as he browses through them—he can’t help but think that everything just looks—kind of bad, if he’s being honest.

He turns a page and stumbles on what he remembers being one of his best pieces ever, or at least he thought so at the time—in hindsight: No. Just no.

The angles are all wrong and the colouring is—it’s not the worst he’s seen, but—

 _It would have worked better as a watercolour_ , he notes to himself, but that might not even be true. Watercolour is still the bane of his existence, but he definitely has a better handle on it now than he used to. So maybe it’s better that never happened or Al could give himself an actual heart attack if he went to search for the result of that in one of his boxes over there.

He moves on. He recognises his themes, the way his art style changes—or maybe, more accurately, how it becomes any kind of style at all.

He’s changed his motives, too, he realises, which is something he’s never quite thought about before.

He’s always had a thing for city pictures, courtesy of his lonely walks at night in London, then there’s quite a lot of the sea, and a little town in Italy, of course, and the curious period that featured gardening—Al almost forgot that happened.

He keeps thinking that—or tries not to think about it, if he’s being super honest, which he isn’t a lot, which is why he tries not to think in the first place, a cycle, really—maybe everything he thought he maybe had with Felina, put in words or not, was not real anyway, that it was just all fake from the start, never anything at all. Or perhaps not nothing, but at the very least not a whole lot. Smaller than he thought. Different than he remembered. Idealisation or something. Misconception.

Or maybe he didn’t think all that much about it, after all. Maybe it just felt big when it imploded. Except that it didn’t. Maybe it just felt like it should have been big, afterwards, but it wasn’t.

He’s not that bothered by the thought, except that he is, both in ways that make no sense to him, and this is way too confusing, this is why he avoids the topic.

This kind of stuff, though, the pictures, make him think otherwise. This wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t—well he isn’t really sure what it was, either, but it was something. A maybe.

Al’s not sure if he should be relieved by that or not.

He’s had a maybe, so perhaps that means he can have an actually, too. Or perhaps that just means that maybe is all he can do.

He presses his eyes together and quickly turns to another page.

He comes to another page that isn’t so much drawing as it’s notes. It confuses him for a second before he remembers.

The mirror. He didn’t have a sketch for that, because he didn’t make one. It wouldn’t have made sense. The whole mirror doesn’t make a lot of sense as it is. It’s pretty cool, but it makes no goddamn sense.

It certainly didn’t have any kind of plan that would make sense to document in a sketch, so it’s just random little notes about the lighting and stuff he wants to fix on it when he wakes up the next day.

Al puts those notes along his sketches quite often stuff he wants to remember when he leaves something for the night and goes to bed, or sometimes just random notes. He’s pretty sure there’s at least ten shopping lists in there and at least one meal plan, even if Al tries to keep that stuff separate like the good, organised assistant he isn’t. It seems like he can’t help but bleed art and life together at every intersection, he can’t even consistently trick himself into keeping it separate.

Without context, most of the notes barely make any sense to him, except those that suddenly do. Maybe that’s what Fawley meant about forgetting.

Al considers writing new notes in there, telling the him of the past where he went wrong.

He doesn’t, though, that seems too much of an intrusion, and even so, in a couple of years it would feel silly to him again anyway. _Just another layer in the record of my stupidity._

He grabs one of the boxes instead, checks the date clearly marked on the lid with what it says in his notebook.

It takes him a bit to find it, but after a few minutes, he pulls out the piece of paper.

“Ha!”, he says out loud, and almost scares himself with the contrast to the otherwise quiet flat.

He stays silent for a second, listening for any sounds, potential signs of someone having woken up, but it’s just the house’s usual creaks.

He diverts his attention back to the paper in front of him, turns it in his head a bit, getting new angles of watercolour paintings on the art room.

 _This_ , he realises with perfect clarity, _is the most impressive thing I’ve ever made._

He can’t be sure, of course, because he doesn’t know the work of literally everyone that’s ever done magical art, but he _is_ actually pretty familiar with wizarding paintings around the world and he’s never heard of another painted mirror before.

He sort of remembers Fawley not knowing another one either, so this might really be the only one.

He also remembers finding it incredibly lame and useless after he finished it.

_There we go. I peaked and I wasn’t even impressed with it._

Mirrors, though—It jogs something else in his memory he must have been thinking about around the same time, mirrors and Scorpius and Felina and Cath and owls, a conversation over sandwiches—

Al jolts and digs deeper into the box.

There they are—the portraits. They’re more or less the only one Al has done, has ever tried at, seriously, and he kind of hated it. He distinctly remembers hating it. He also remembers trying with them for quite a long time anyway, because that was a time when he still had an ounce of patience within him, but also because—he was trying to do something. He was trying to do something, but it wasn’t—it didn’t work, obviously, but maybe it could work—it could work, if maybe he went about it differently.

The thought sets Al’s blood on fire again, but in a different way, in an exciting way, in the way that nothing else does, not even transfiguration.

He pulls out a new sheet of paper, the thick kind he uses for watercolours.

He’ll have to see if he can do this kind of thing again.

* * *

Things become a little more focused again after that.

They don’t really, of course. Al is still a failure with no real purpose and/or prospects, and the world around him is still changing faster than he can keep up with, but at least he has a distraction now, the sense that he’s doing something. He can pretend that it contributes something to the world, even if all it does is satisfy his own curiosity.

It’s nicer in theory than in practice, though, because as soon as Al starts caring about the results of his own actions again in a way that goes beyond feeling guilty over failing people in ways that have and haven’t happened yet, he also immediately starts not being able to reproduce them.

There is, as it turns out, quite a big difference between drawing a mirror and drawing a picture of a mirror.

Okay, so he kind of knew that before. Of course there is a difference between drawing a picture of a mirror and whatever he did when he essentially made that watercolour mirror. He just doesn’t know what the difference is, process-wise.

That’s the problem. And apparently, he’s kind of bad at figuring it out.

“It’s normal that you don’t manage it consistently when you haven’t done it a lot of times.”, says Fawley.

He’s right, of course, and Al knows it, too. That doesn’t mean he can’t be frustrated by it. He can. And he is.

They haven’t talked much about what Al is trying to do, not in very concrete terms, but Fawley is familiar enough with Al’s patterns to draw his own conclusions.

“This isn’t inconsistent, this is non-existent.”, Al growls. He only means it half as grumpy as it comes out.

* * *

“I’m getting it under control”, he tells Rose and Scorpius, which feels like an admission, but also like an olive branch or something, something that isn’t halfway a lie.

He really might be.

He’s trying, anyway.

* * *

And all that does something to ease all the strange feelings going through Al’s brain, burning in his blood, even if it’s not quite enough for him to be able to really ignore it.

Ignoring it, in all honesty, is Al’s preferred method for dealing with things, but even he has his limits. And he’s trying to try, so—

The problem with that is of course that, well. If he had all the solutions, he wouldn’t—alas, he doesn’t really know what’s wrong with him, anyway, the way he never does, so. Time to play darts with a blindfold. Except that you’re not really sure which direction the board is, or if you’re even playing dart at all, and by the way, do the laws of gravity apply?

Okay, the metaphor is getting out of hand. No need to be melodramatic. Melodramatic isn’t Al’s style.

He is very chill, very calm, doesn’t use swear words. That’s how you survive being Al Potter, and that’s what he’s always been doing.

“Hey Al”, Monica says as he comes inside her office.

“Hi.”, Al says.

She looks at him expectantly. When Al doesn’t come up with something to say right away, she asks: “Do you have an issue with the schedule for this month?”

Al shakes his head quickly. He never has issues with the schedule. He doesn’t really have enough obligations that are fixed in time to have issues with the schedule. He can plan the rest of his life around his work hours easily enough. In a way, he couldn’t really have a better place of employment—muggle enough that people leave him be, and more crucially, muggle enough that his phone doesn’t malfunction, so Fawley can call him anytime.

“No”, he says out loud, “It’s just—you’ve put me in for a lot more afternoon shifts lately.”

“Yes, we have quite a lot of new faces, and we lost a few old ones, so it just works out like that this year—is that a problem?”

She’s tapping her pencil on a piece of paper, apparently already figuring out how to solve that issue.

“No, no”, Al says quickly, “I was just wondering—since I’ve been doing basically only evening and night this past few years.”

Monica shrugs. “I used to just put you with Cath as much as possible, but now that she isn’t here anymore…”

“Yeah”, Al interrupts, pulling at his own fingers, not looking at her. “I was just wondering—I was so used to doing bar stuff, but in the afternoon, it’s quite a bit different, and I figured I could do with some changes, so, uh—”

He doesn’t know how to phrase it, and suddenly it seems like a stupid idea.

Sure, so maybe everyone in his life, including his bloody parents is moving on to different things, but that doesn’t mean—well, it’s not like marginally changing his tasks in a café-slash-bar can compare to trying to change wizarding laws and healing sick children, or saving the financial world or whatever it is that Cath does. It’s just not the same thing and he’s stupid for trying to treat it like that.

“You want to do some different training?”, Monica asks.

Al cringes, but yes, that is essentially what he meant.

“I mean”, he stutters, “If that’s okay? I just figure I could be a little more useful if I knew a little more about the different coffees? I can sort of do cocktails, and all the other drinks, but the day-part, uh—I just thought it might—”

“No, no”, Monica says, “We can do that. It’s actually a good idea, with a little barista knowledge you’d be a lot more versatile.”

“That’s me”, Al says, in a lame attempt at a joke, “Versatile professional, in the, uh, beverages industry.”

Monica is kind enough to smile a little at the joke.

“As long as you don’t go running off and take all that knowledge to the competition, that’s fine.”

Al grimaces. “There’s little chance of that.”

“Good”, says Monica, the firmness in her voice surprising him, “We’ve lost a couple of good people this year, I’d like to keep you a little longer still.” She flips over a few pages in a binder, quickly making some kind of notes.

“On that note, how is Cath?”, she asks, without looking at him, “Doing well?”

“Oh”, Al says, “Cath, is, uh, doing fine. Great actually.”

He doesn’t really know of, course, hasn’t talked to her since her last day of work here. Hasn’t had a reason to, not one that makes sense or he could explain.

But it’s clear that Monica expects him to know, seems certain that they are talking, and as he sits down and gives her some bullshit-vague non-answer because he doesn’t want to correct her, he just. Also can’t find a reason why they shouldn’t be. Still talking.

He could have—called her. But what for? Everything he can think of is so vague, falls apart in his own eyes before it can come together properly. It’s not that he doesn’t have a reason, even if he doesn’t know it, there must be one for all the time he pretends he doesn’t stare at her contact information in his phone. It’s that he doesn’t have an excuse.

His entire shift is clouded by that thought and the weird feelings that come with it.

It’s like another box has been opened by something he didn’t expect. It’s been happening too much lately, and he doesn’t have enough duct tape in his brain to keep them contained anymore.

Even Jessica gets the hint eventually, and, after a few failed attempts at conversation, leaves him to work in silence.

It’s only when Al’s changing out of his uniform in the backroom that he pulls out his phone again.

He’s back on the street again by the time he’s managed to open the right menu, the one that lets him stare right at the call button.

Because that’s what he does, the entire way home.

He doesn’t press it, though.

It’s just—he can’t just call her anymore, really. It’s been too long, and he doesn’t have an answer to the ‘why now?’ It’s been too long for there not to be a reason. And she hasn’t called, either, obviously, so she really probably definitely doesn’t care that much and—not everyone is like Al. Most people don’t latch onto their friends the same intense way he does. He knows that, kind of.

So.

He won’t call Cath, he can’t. Even though he really wants to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and please tell me what you think!


	23. and time will eventually knock on my door (and tell me I'm not needed around anymore)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Al doesn't know how not to be lonely. And suffers a great loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: character death (not explicit or gorey or anything, i think if you've read so far you can see it coming)
> 
> It's been a while, sorry about that. I had some busy months and some Al-like feelings for a while, and this next bit has been kind of hard to write. Thank you so much for the lovely comments on the last chapter and thank you for everyone that is still here with me and Al!

In the next month, Al decides that he has to get his life back on track.

He isn’t really sure what that means, in all honesty, considering that his life was never on something that could reasonably be called a track. He still kind of thinks that he used to be a little more in control. Or maybe he just felt more in control, but isn’t that ultimately kind of the same thing?

He decides that it doesn’t matter.

So he starts to go running again. He starts running again, and he spends his nights more or less unsuccessfully trying to paint a mirror, and he learns how to make ridiculously fancy coffee.

He wonders sometimes if there is any point in all of that, any purpose to what he’s doing, but he tries not to think about it, because he senses that this train of thought will catapult him right down the edge of some cliff and he doesn’t quite know what’s down there.

He tries to make himself see Rose and Scorpius at least twice a week, too, and it helps that he’s doing all this other stuff, because this way, he can recycle the effort he uses to convince himself that he’s turning over a new leaf—not sure on what, exactly—on them.

Still, it’s easier, right now, not thinking, because there’s another kind of raw and urgent purpose for him at the moment, right there for the taking.

He convinces Fawley to go outside with him at least four times a week, tag along to the post office, or grocery shopping or just out on a walk. Al’s read something about vitamin D and old age and perhaps it doesn’t matter anymore for Fawley, because all the correct eating and sunshine in the world—but it doesn’t hurt, either and Al will try whatever he can.

Fawley’s never that hard to convince. Al isn’t sure if it’s because he’s humouring Al, or if he just likes getting out of the flat either way.

Al doesn’t care. He just tries to keep those moments, etch their details into his brain more precisely than either of them could ever draw so that he can hold them in his brain forever, no matter how cold the old man is all the time, and how much he shivers and how easily he gets out of breath.

This isn’t all about purpose, of course, there’s so much more to it.

Sometimes when Al runs through Soho Square Gardens, he has to stop in the middle of his round because he wants to cry about how unfair it all is.

* * *

He quietly decides that, this year, he won’t go to the Burrow for Christmas dinner. He drops his presents for everyone off beforehand instead. He sees his parents soon enough, anyway, and he promises himself that he’ll visit Grandma Molly and Grandpa Arthur some time in the following days.

He makes dinner for Fawley instead, and an effort to decorate, and they quietly go on their Christmas walk. They don’t do much more than walking these days. Walking, eating and talking, not even a lot of art, but that’s fine.

It’s all fine. Al doesn’t need any more than that.-

Mrs. Marlow invites them over for tea, and that’s fine, too. It’s nice, even, although she talks too much and her biscuits are too sweet, it all doesn’t matter.

Fawley gives Al a book on magical statues and all the ways they can be enchanted which makes Al instantly think of the gargoyle at Hogwarts again. Did he ever mention that to Fawley? He can’t remember, so he tells him now.

Al gets Fawley a set of binoculars, which is kind of useless because it’s entirely too hopeful. Fawley seems to like them, anyway, or maybe just because of that. Al doesn’t want to ask. He doesn’t want to ruin it.

It’s such a good day.

It doesn’t need to be ruined.

* * *

“Why didn’t you go?”, Lily asks him when he calls her to tell her Merry Christmas.

Al shrugs, even though she can’t see that through the phone.

“Why didn’t you?” Al knows because Rose mentioned it.

“I have—stuff”, Lily says, the opposite of inconspicuously, “over here.”

“Yeah”, Al replies, “Same.”

He’s not sure if it comes out quite right, or if it sounds snappy and distant, but Lily doesn’t say anything, so he assumes it’s fine, sort of.

He has the vague feeling that he should tease her about her mystery obligations, or ask about them at least, or do whatever good brothers do. Show that he cares. Make sure that bond between them is still there. But he doesn’t want her to push about his reason, doesn’t want to talk about Fawley, even if there’s no real mystery to it.

As far as brothers go, James is probably nosy enough for two, he thinks to himself. She should be covered. It’s fine if he leaves her be.

Or maybe he’s just too tired either way.

It feels a little like the universe is suddenly very small and very present, and like it has closed in on Al and Fawley in a way that makes every moment more and more real and more important, profound no matter how mundane.

And Lily is so far away from that tiny universe, intense and real in a way Al doesn’t usually experience the world, contrasting the grey fog he usually wraps himself in. It’s smaller, but at the same time, it’s almost too much, and it’s hard to invest himself in something outside of it, when Al is so busy trying to hold on to just that as much as he can.

* * *

December bleeds into the new year, and then there’s February, and March and April. Nothing much seems to change, except for the weather.

Al makes progress with the fancy coffees and with certain mirrors.

They keep the apartment extra warm now. Al doesn’t love it, but he can deal.

Apparently, when your magic goes, it takes your warmth, too.

Fawley needs to go to the hospital another time, not a scheduled visit, but because he’s too weak to get out of bed.

Al is at home for that, and thanks Merlin and heaven and everything else he can think of for that. But after, he tries to go outside less, reduces his hours at the _Nightowl._ There’s only so much he can limit it, though.

At times, he asks Mrs. Marlow to come over, even though that means they have to hide all of their stuff.

Fawley makes a few jokes, but he doesn’t complain about it.

That’s a small kindness if there can be one in that conversation.

Al drowns his heartache in painting and routines, the same way he always has.

He thinks that maybe it doesn’t work as well anymore as it used to, but perhaps it just feels different. Not so much drowning it, maybe. Those are just the things he has in spite of it, the things he can make himself do, even if it doesn’t really matter.

* * *

“Do you have to work today?”, Fawley asks him one Saturday morning, while Al makes breakfast for the two of them.

It’s kind of early for Al’s measures, but he’s been trying to shift his sleep schedule a little further into normal territory, so that he isn’t asleep for so much of the time that Fawley’s awake. It’s a problem that’s slowly disappearing, as Fawley starts sleeping through more and more of the day, but that’s another story.

Or perhaps, that is the story precisely.

“No”, he replies. He has the day off. “Do you need me to do anything?”

He turns off the stove.

“Let’s go to the sea.”, says Fawley.

Al turns around abruptly, putting the pan back on the stovetop. “What?”

“Make a trip.”, Fawley says, “Let’s say, Eastbourne.”

“Why?”, Al says, utterly astonished.

His surprise isn’t even just because Fawley’s so sick these days. Al can’t remember Fawley ever wanting to take a trip, in all the years he’s known him, which, admittedly, compared to Fawley’s life span isn’t all that long. Sure, they’ve gone to all those galleries, and Al’s taken him along to Hogsmeade, but all of that was Al’s idea. Fawley seemed to enjoy them well enough, of course, but at the same time he was always perfectly content to just be here, be home, be in London.

Al had asked him about it once, when Fawley was nagging him about widening his horizons and all that.

“When you’re as old as me”, Fawley had said, “You learn where your place is.”

And that was that.

Al always assumed that Fawley felt connected with the city in the same way Al does, if not more. Then again, Fawley isn’t the one that likes to take endless walks at night.

Fawley dodges the question.

“Are you going to come or not?”, he asks instead, like he will just go on his own if Al were to say no, which of course, would be insane.

Even so, it’s kind of insane.

“Hold on”, Al says, “I just need to figure out how we’re going to get there.”

* * *

It takes Al about an hour to make a reasonable plan on how to get to Eastbourne with all of their combined issues, but he figures it out. It was never really an option to say no. And Fawley rarely asks him to do anything anymore, these days. Mostly it’s Al asking what he can do, what he’s allowed to do.

“Where do you want to go?”, Al asks Fawley now, as they get off the Knight Bus.

He’s no real expert on Eastbourne, he’s never been there, nor heard anything particularly interesting about it. He doesn’t think it’s a wizarding town, either. It’s just—English. Kind of pretty. It has the sea and the beach and a pier, and the downtown is nice enough.

“Let’s just walk.”, says Fawley.

“Alright.”, says Al.

And so they do.

Fawley directs them all around, makes them stop by a random store that sells old books and sits down inside for half an hour looking at everything. He doesn’t buy anything, there, but he does make Al go to Mark and Spencer’s to buy a box of chocolate brownies Al’s never eaten before to share on the beach.

They don’t talk, beyond the odd direction, the little conversation that is needed to make sue they are still there, _I want to go here, let’s sit down there, are you coming?_ Al doesn’t ask any questions and Fawley doesn’t offer any answers.

They’ve had their share of quiet special days now, almost too many, but never enough, the kind that Al is trying to fill his brain with so that he won’t forget it.

This one is like this but it isn’t, too random and strange and determined to be random at all. Al suspects that there is some kind of reason to the criss-crosses Fawley takes around the neighborhood, even if they make no geographical sense. It isn’t about being here and now, not about cherishing what you have. Or maybe it is, Al wouldn’t know.

This, he guesses, is about part of a story he doesn’t know. He isn’t sure if he’s allowed to ask.

“I want to go home now.”, Fawley says, suddenly firmly.

Al looks at him, surprised. It’s not quite late afternoon yet, plenty of more time left to do whatever else Fawley is here to do.

But it seems like Fawley is done, all of a sudden, as much out of nothing as he wanted to come here. But that probably didn’t come out of nowhere, and, in all likelihood,

“Okay”, Al says, trying to conceal his surprise. He isn’t sure how successful he is.

He finds them a darker corner and calls the Knight Bus once again.

They don’t have all that many customers during the day, for reasons that Al doesn’t understand except that he suspects they might have something to do with the pun that is its name or something, so the bus more or less jumps straight to London and lets them out.

Al pays the fare for both of them, and hurries to help Fawley up the stairs.

“Thank you for going with me.”, Fawley says with the same, quiet serious voice that doesn’t suit him at all.

If Al were a bit more of an asshole than he is, he could say something like _yeah, well, it’s not like you could go on your own._ He would be right, to, probably. No, definitely, if he’s being honest.

It doesn’t matter. Al doesn’t say that, of course not.

“Of course.”, he says instead.

* * *

He goes to see Rose and Scorpius that night. He probably shouldn’t, should stay with Fawley instead, make sure he’s as fine as he can be, more today than any other day. He can’t help himself, though.

And he doesn’t want to cry where Fawley might hear.

* * *

It’s not long after that that Fawley gets admitted to St. Mungo’s again.

It’s another attack, not in his sleep this time, or while he’s casting a spell. He’s just sitting there, drinking tea like he always does, when suddenly his face goes slack.

Al doesn’t even hesitate this time, has memorised the signs and steps to the point that even the shock of the situation can wipe them from his brain.

He apparates to St. Mungo right that second, the words he has to say right there on his tongue so he can say them before he’ll inevitably throw up.

He manages to do it, even, get help in the fastest possible way, get them to the flat when it isn’t safe to magically transport Fawley anymore.

“That was an excellent response.”, Fawley’s healer tells him later when they’re both sitting at Fawley’s bed. It’s the bed in the hospital after all, having moved him the old boring way. That, funnily enough, isn’t dangerous at all.

Al doesn’t look at the healer, watches Fawley’s breaths instead. That’s something to hold onto.

He doesn’t know what to say, anyway. What is there to say when an excellent response doesn’t really do any good?

“I was prepared.”, he says anyway, trying to at least be a little polite, even if he hardly knows how to.

They’ve already asked him all the questions, know all the information, at least all that Al can give and Al has been paying attention over the past couple of months, even to the things that Fawley doesn’t mention out loud.

There aren’t even that many questions anymore, which is perhaps a sign.

“Mr. Potter”, Healer Kennedy says, and Al knows that it’s coming now.

“Just a moment.”, he interrupts.

He presses his eyes together, clenches his fists, just for a second, not any longer than that. He just needs to steel himself a little, prepare himself for something he already knows anyway.

It’s summer by now, but you couldn’t tell inside the hospital, charms keeping the perfect temperature all year round. It’s like time goes to die here. Well, it wouldn’t be the only thing.

“Okay”, he says, snapping out of the thought. This is like ripping of a plaster. If he takes longer than this, it’ll just be harder rather than easier. Or is that the metaphor? All of that stuff is getting mixed in his head.

“Mr. Fawley has reached the final stages of his illness.”, Healer Kennedy says very gently, too gently.

Al thinks he should probably say something to this, but he doesn’t want to, yet, he wants to hear everything before he has to react.

“There is nothing more that we can do for him to delay his passing away.”

Al nods, slowly. This has kind of been true this whole time, the thinks, except that might not be true, who knows in what way these potions might have helped? Al sure doesn’t, he hasn’t even brewed a potion since fifth year.

“How long?”, he asks instead, surprising himself with how raw his voice sounds.

Healer Kennedy sighs, abandoning a little of the formality of the situation.

“It could be any day now, or a couple of weeks? A month or two at best.”

“Okay”, says Al, “Thank you.”

He feels the tears coming into his eyes, so he doesn’t move his face an inch, refusing to give them a chance to come out. He reigns his emotions in instead.

“Does he have to stay here?”, he asks, trying to focus on the practical part of it instead, partly because he knows if he doesn’t do it now, he might not manage it and it needs to be done, partly because it helps him not bloody fall apart right there.

“No. He can, but—there won’t be a big difference, medically speaking.”

Al nods. “Okay”, he says again, “I’ll ask him, but I think he’ll want to go home.”

“Of course.”, Healer Kennedy replies. She leaves soon after that.

Al sits there, of course. He keeps sitting there. It’s not like there’s an alternative.

He pulls out his phone, after a while.

He does that a lot these days, not to do anything (or so he tells himself, at least.)

Mostly it’s to check that he still has it, that he didn’t mysteriously lose it somewhere and Fawley could be dying somewhere out there without him. Funny how that doesn’t even matter in any way at all. Fawley’s never even used it. It’s become a safeguard for Al instead, something to check when he was feeling anxious and worried and lonely.

The last word slips out with his thoughts and he can’t put it back. He doesn’t want to acknowledge what it means, doesn’t want to think about it, even when he already feels like he knows. He can pretend he doesn’t. Or maybe he can’t.

Al is with Fawley right now. He’s right there, on the bed, waiting to be strong enough to be moved again. Asleep. There’s no need to worry about him dying somewhere without Al. He’s doing it right here with Al there.

There. It’s been thought.

 _That doesn’t make it better at all_ , Al realises. Well, he isn’t sure what he expected.

He looks down at the display again, and works the only function of it he can operate, beyond call and answer call.

Contact list.

 _Alistair_ , it says right on top. Al had it saved as _Fawley_ before he realised that the list sorted alphabetically, and putting in the name with A would put Fawley in the top spot. Not that it matters that much, anyway, it’s not like the list is by any stretch long.

It’s just Fawley, Lily, the number of the _Nightowl,_ and Cath.

Cath.

Al selects the name clumsily with the tiny buttons and opens the contact page. It’s not like there’s anything to see there, except the name and the number, and the ugly background design of how the contact page looks.

Al stares at the number for too long, like it might reveal any mysteries. It doesn’t. It’s a bloody number. It hasn’t at any point during the other millions of times he’s looked at it over the past year. Al knows that it won’t tell him anything new.

He just—he wants to talk about this to her. It almost feels like a physical ache.

Before he can stop himself he’s pressed the green button and it starts calling.

Al panics and almost can’t stop himself from throwing the entire thing across the room. He catches himself at the last moment, though. Fawley doesn’t need a head injury from a flying cell phone of all things. That’s stupid.

And he’s being stupid, anyway. It’s been a year. He should be over this—whatever it even it, Al doesn’t have a clue. It’s certainly not a problem anybody else seems to have. Or if they do, they don’t talk about it. They just deal with it, which Al can’t seem to manage, not even when it’s the worst possible time and his—his mentor, for lack of a better word that actually in any way expresses what he means to Al—is dying in the other bed.

He still picks up the phone again from where it’s fallen into his lap. He still wants to see if she picks up, if she even still has his number at all.

It doesn’t matter.

The display has gone bright purple with neon green spirals on it. Al has to look away again before he gets dizzy, from either the terrible colour combination, or the circles, or both. Too much magic in the magical hospital for technology. He should have expected that.

He tries not to examine whether he’s relieved or disappointed by that as he chugs the phone back into the pocket of his jeans.

* * *

Rose, he knows, is here today. In all likelihood she’s even on this ward, it is kind of within her area of study after all. He would be pulling her from work, but if he really wanted to talk to someone, he could try to find her, or even try to get someone to find her for him. She’d call it a family emergency and probably wouldn’t even get into too much trouble. At the very least she would be able to get Scorpius here, just so that Al wouldn’t have to be alone.

He’d come, if at all possible. No, he’d even come if it was impossible.

Al knows that. He’s so lucky. He has people that love him so much, even when something terrible is happening.

He doesn’t try to find Rose. He doesn’t try to get someone to find her for him. He doesn’t send a message to Scorpius, or his parents, or Lucy, or Lily or anyone else.

He could argue that he doesn’t want to disturb them when there’s nothing that can be done, anyway. But that’s not really why, and if he lets himself, he knows that, too.

* * *

Al is right. Fawley wants to go home.

Al doesn’t know what Healer Kennedy tells him exactly, but she must have informed him on the situation. When Al gets back into his hospital room, Fawley asks him to move Fawley’s bed into the art room.

So Al does that.

It’s not to paint, Fawley doesn’t paint anymore.

It’s a little bit because his fingers are too unsteady now, sometimes, because they shake and shiver and he can’t even hold the brush. Mostly though, it’s because of the magic. Fawley’s been painting for so long, his magic is intertwined with his art, the two can’t be separated. And, on the magic side, there isn’t a whole lot left.

“You go draw something.”, Fawley says.

“I—“, Al says looking around the room, “I don’t have to. It’s fine, I don’t mind just sitting with you.”

He really doesn’t. He wouldn’t mind getting a whole lifetime more of it, but he won’t.

“I want to watch.”, Fawley says.

Al looks back at him, tiny man, tied to a bed in a room full of art with the most piercing eyes Al knows, even if they’re always tired these days.

“Okay”, says Al.

“Work on that project of yours”, Fawley says.

Al knows he means the mirrors. The—he doesn’t know what to call them now, isn’t sure if they even still count as mirrors, strictly, with what he’s been trying to get them to do.

“It won’t be finished in time.”, Al admits. It sounds like the failure it is. It won’t, he knows it won’t. Maybe it would have been, if he’d picked it back up again a little earlier, but he didn’t.

“Doesn’t matter.”, Fawley says, “You’ll finish it anyway, won’t you?”

Al isn’t— _What for?_ , he wants to say, _What purpose will it have?_

He doesn’t, though. He knows that Fawley doesn’t see the world that way, not in the same grey shades that Al fears he does most days. He doesn’t want to inflict that bleakness on Fawley now. It’s not kind, it doesn’t do any good.

“I will.”, he says instead. He doesn’t like lying, so he’ll have to make sure this won’t be a lie—another sacrifice, he supposes, countless hours again and again. He doesn’t care. He never has, truly, he doesn’t think, and he never has less than now.

That’s what it feels like, at least, sitting there. Certainty about the things he usually tries to not let himself have doubts about. Cruel certainty, sure, but certainty.

So Al paints. He makes another mirror, he has the hang of it now, gotten it sometime in that last year, just a small one. He pulls out his books and his research, the stuff he’s made his father borrow from the Hogwarts library for him, about statues and mirrors that speak, and objects that act like they are other things.

It’s all there. Al just has to find a way to solve the several problems this still has before he will be able to get it to work the way it’s supposed to.

The talking is the one thing. The other thing are the multiple targets and how it knows which one it’s supposed to zero in on.

Al doesn’t explain his thought process to Fawley and Fawley doesn’t ask. Not really.

He still offers his commentary sporadically.

When Al tries to go for another medium, for example, frustrated with blooms and too much water and the endless stupid things that he always thinks won’t be so bad for whatever reason, Fawley says: “Stick with watercolours. They’re your favourite, anyway.”

Al stares back at him. “I hate watercolours.”

“You love them.”, says Fawley, without even a hint of hesitation or doubt.

Al holds his gaze for maybe five seconds before he caves.

“Yeah, alright, I do.”

Fawley grins.

“Don’t get too excited about it.”, Al grumbles, already regretting his admission. Only kind of though, as he pulls out the watercolours again.

Fawley shrugs. “It’ll work better, and it’s cheaper. I don’t see what you have to complain about.”

“Just the elimination of every last one of my nerves”, Al mumbles, somewhat nonsensically, before he stops: “Do you really think?”

“That it’ll work better with watercolours?”, Fawley asks. “Not it I were doing it.” He yawns. “But I couldn’t make that, anyway. For you, for sure.”

“Okay”, says Al, blinking at him, before he looks don, gets a hold of himself and lost in painting again.

* * *

Al tries to stay as home as much as possible now. He did that before, too, he thought at least, but now he’s really doing it.

He chokes an explanation out to Monica, so she’ll let him take even less shifts. He knows she can only let him do that for so long, a month or maybe two, but that doesn’t—“That’ll be fine.”, Al says, and manages to keep his voice from breaking.

He isn’t ready to think about the after yet.

He buys groceries after work and as quickly as he can, then he goes back home.

He doesn’t go to Sunday dinner with his parents. He half-expects Fawley to be upset with him as he cooks up a stir fry for the two of them instead, but he doesn’t say anything.

As he said, they don’t talk that much. Fawley is asleep now, most of the time anyway.

Al sits by his bed and paints, because that’s what he wants. He gives him water and food and potions and helps him clean himself and go to the bathroom. He opens the windows and casts cleaning spells.

He doesn’t go to visit Rose and Scorpius. He tells them about what’s happening of course, tells them he’s busy.

Rose writes their response. Her handwriting is shaky.

Al checks his own handwriting. It’s fine, looks like it always does. Nowhere near as neat as Rose’ is on any given day, but not harsher than it does when everything’s normal. Funny how that goes.

She asks if they can come by.

Al wants to say no. He isn’t even sure why. He doesn’t want to think about it, either, so he asks Fawley about his opinion instead.

“Rose and Scorpius?”, he asks, “Are they coming to see you or me?”

His voice is tinted with humour, like he doesn’t know why Al’s asking him, why his opinion would be relevant to the subject.

But Al isn’t actually sure what the answer is.

“Both of us, I think.”

Fawley raises an eyebrow.

“Well”, Al says, “They usually never come here just to see me, so I reckon you’ve got something to do with it.”

Fawley is quiet at that, for too long, so long that Al looks up from his mess of water on paper. Well, that’s probably not a fair description of what he’s doing, if he’s entirely honest, but Al isn’t really in a mindset to talk his own work up.

Fawley’s neither fallen asleep nor in a mild illness-induced stupor or anything like that, as Al realises with relief when he meets his eyes over where he’s propped up in the bed.

“What?”. Al says nervously, trying to break the weird tension that’s spread itself out between them.

“You are a very sweet boy.”, says Fawley, gently, without breaking eye contact.

Al squirms a little. He doesn’t know what’s brought this on, and he doesn’t know how to react.

He looks back at his mirror painting, so he doesn’t have to look at Fawley.

Instead he sees the watercolour rendition of his own face, shadows under his eyes, messy bush of hairs and all in fine, delicate strokes. He’s not sure if that’s any better.

* * *

So Rose and Scorpius come around. It’s weird, Al can tell from the very moment that they come in.

Maybe it’s his fault a little because he never brings them here, he can count the number of times they’ve been on one hand, they’ve never had the chance to move around this place with the same familiarity as Al does at their flat. It’s not fair to fault them for it.

Still, it’s more than that. It’s the kind of wariness and awkwardness that Al hasn’t let in since all of this has gotten so bad. Except that, now it’s here.

He’s moved the general piles of stuff in the art room around a little so that Scorpius could move around in it if he needs his wheelchair today.

He doesn’t, leaning on his weird old-fashioned crutches instead, as Al ushers them inside.

“Would you make some tea for our guests, Albus?”, Fawley calls from the bed.

Al’s heart aches. He doesn’t think that, before the past couple of weeks, he’s ever been the one to make the tea in this flat. He doesn’t say anything about it, though, he can’t.

“Of course!”, he calls back.

“We moved Alistair’s bed in the art room.”, he explains awkwardly. “I’ll just go put the kettle on.”

He disappears into the kitchen before either of his friends can say much of anything.

That’s not fair to them, maybe, but Al needs to be selfish sometimes, too. And if he takes a little longer with the tea than strictly necessary, then that’s not really making matters that much worse. Or maybe it is. It kind of feels like it probably is, but Al can’t keep himself. He kind of wants to stay in that kitchen forever, with the people he loves together in the other room, there, and safe, and there, but not where he has to be the big person for them. But if he stays in here forever, the tea is going to get cold, and he can’t have that. It’s a house rule. No cold tea. And you can’t disrespect the house rules.

Scorpius has borrowed Al’s chair, the one he sits in to draw right next to Fawley’s head for himself, Rose is standing right at his side, one hand resting on his shoulders.

They’re both looking at Fawley, apparently talking to him, with too serious faces, the kind of thing that’s normal for them, but normal for him and the sight let’s something loose in Al.

When the door screeches, they look up though, and a bit of the tension breaks.

Al realises that he doesn’t have anywhere to put the tablet with the tea, so he pulls out his wand and makes a small table in the space next to Scorpius, along with two chairs for him and Rose.

They’re flexible with furniture in this room, they kind of have to be. Their space changes all the time.

“Al!”. Rose shouts, startled.

Al’s dropped one of the chairs on her toes. “I’m sorry.”, he says, and only half-means it, but that’s because he doesn’t have the emotional energy to care all that much right now. He’s already doing too many complicated things with his feelings. “I’ll aim better next time.”

He puts the tea down and thinks about how he could have made biscuits. That would have been nice, wouldn’t it? Fawley likes biscuits. Al should definitely make biscuits one of these days.

“That’s not what I meant.”, says Rose, pulling Al out of his biscuit thoughts. She sounds a little dazed.

Al doesn’t really get what her problem is, so he just shrugs at her.

She groans. “I can’t believe you still do that.”, she says, “I thought that was a phase or something, to flex on the rest of us or something.”

Oh. Well now Al knows what she’s talking about.

“It’s a practical charm.”, he says, “I don’t know what your problem is. Now we don’t have to bring in the chairs from the kitchen.”

Rose fake-coughs. “Show-off.”

Al grins, letting himself sink into the familiarity of the old joke.

The feeling fades as he realises he doesn’t have a clue what happens next.

“So”, he says, “uh, how are you guys doing?”

It sounds terrible, like they’ve never in their lives had a conversation about something other than the weather. Al can actually feel himself cringe.

There’s a short silence.

“We’re good.”, Rose says, finally, “We’re doing okay.”

Another pause.

Scorpius still hasn’t said anything. Scorpius is good at being quiet though, when he wants to be.

“I heard you’re kicking up quite the storm at the ministry. “, says Fawley, unexpectedly. Al forgets sometimes that he’s the only one in this household that doesn’t keep up with the news.

“Yes sir”, Scorpius says, like it’s some kind of interrogation.

Al shoots him a look. He almost wants to be mad at him for it, but that doesn’t make any sense either.

Scorpius softens a little. “We’re—trying.”, he says. “We’re making some progress, but it’s slow going. We’re trying our best, but there are a lot of people that need to be convinced.”

“I imagine so.”, Fawley says. He has that sparkle in his eyes again that Al knows so well. Even after all these years he still isn’t quite sure if he’s figured out what it means. Sometimes he thinks it’s what Fawley looks like when he’s making fun of him, but then at other times it isn’t like that at all. Like now.

“Getting muggle parents into Hogwarts—that’s always gonna take a lot of convincing with the old boys.”

“Well, yeah”, says Scorpius, “I think it’s the right thing to do, though. It only makes sense—you wouldn’t let your kid go to some faraway school to learn something you don’t understand, either, especially if they can’t show you anything of what they’ve learned, would you?”

He stops abruptly. “Sorry, you don’t have children. And this is not a sales pitch—I just—get into it sometimes.” He kneads his hands together. “We’ll work it out, though.”

Unwavering optimism, as always.

Al wonders what Scorpius would do if he was ever presented with a fait accompli, like Al constantly seems to be. Except Al already knows that, has seen it before. Maybe it’s better this way. Scorpius was lucky that time. Sometimes you can’t be lucky. Al will be able to deal with that. He thinks.

Then he gets annoyed with himself, because the situation doesn’t compare at all, and doing so really is no good.

“I don’t doubt it.”, says Fawley. “Kingsley and Granger have changed a lot of things for the better—you should be able to knock the old families down a notch now, even if they still have a lot of power.”

“I didn’t know you knew so much about politics.”, Al says.

Fawley shrugs, the best one can in a half-reclined position. “I’ve been alive for quite a long time. It’s always the same old power squabbles with those people. You pick it up over time.”

“Oh.”, says Al. He sounds small. He can hear it in his own voice. He can feel Rose looking at him. He hates it.

Suddenly, he can’t bear it anymore.

“I need to go get something.”, he presses out.

He stands up, and heads towards his room, like there’s anything actually in there, beyond a few books and his clothes and his bed.

“I’ll help you.”, Rose says, coming after him.

Al almost closes the door in front of her face, but he contains herself. He wants to get out of the situation, not get sucked into it even more.

“I’m sure Scorpius would rather you stay with him.”, he tells her quietly.

She plops down on his bed. “Scorpius can handle himself.”

Al closes the door and sits down beside her.

He doesn’t have anything to get. He’s pretty sure Rose knows that, anyway.

They’re quiet for a moment.

“Why are you here?”, Al asks, eventually, trying not to make it sounds like an accusation.

“I’m helping you to get something.”, Rose says.

Al throws her a look. He isn’t in the mood for being funny.

“Just trying to make sure you’re alright.”, she says, a little softer.

“Well.”, Al says. “I am. I have things handled.”

He’s kind of waiting for her to argue with him, call him out on the fact that he’s totally out of his depth, but she doesn’t.

“Well yeah”, she says instead, “You have it handled. I can see that. But that doesn’t mean you’re all right. Also I meant more like, right now.”

“Oh.”, Al says, but doesn’t offer any further insight. He doesn’t want to tell her that her and Scorpius’ being here is throwing him off. That seems like a mean thing to say to his best friends, even if it is true. He backtracks a little instead.

“I meant, why are you here? In the flat. You and Scorpius.”

Rose looks at him.

“I think you’d know.”, she says, like she doesn’t want to say it out loud. Al can sympathise with that, although he thought she would be better at that than he is, being a healer and all. Or maybe she’s just being kind. Or she knows that it might spook him.

Al thinks it wouldn’t, not anymore. He’s gotten used to the idea now. But that sounds like a lie, even in his own head, still.

“You didn’t have to.”, he says, tetchy.

Rose half-turns to him.

“Yeah”, she says, “yeah, we had to.”

“It’s weird.”, Al says, voice unsteady, “like that information—changes something about everything, and suddenly you have to act different. You shouldn’t. It’s weird.”

“Well, yeah”, says Rose, not offended, but alarmed, “because this changes things. Death changes things. Dying changes things. You can’t go on like everything’s the same.”

Al winces as she says it. He knows that she saw.

“Not for you.”, he mumbles.

“What?”, says Rose.

Al half-wants to back down.

“It doesn’t change anything for you. It’s just some old painter that doesn’t paint anymore.”

She touches the side of his face, turning his head so that he has to look at her. Her eyes are glittering, showing more emotion than Al has all this time, he’s pretty sure. It almost makes him angry.

“That’s not true at all.”, she says, “I know him. Not very well, to be fair, but still. A life always matters. And even beyond that, of course it makes a difference to us. It makes a difference to you, doesn’t it?”

Al shrugs.

He just—he already feels like his insides have been spread out in a thin layer for miles and miles and he doesn’t have the energy to stretch any broader anymore. He just can’t. He can’t talk about it right now.

“I’m handling this.”, he says, instead, “I’m doing everything.”

He isn’t even sure what everything is in that context, he just knows that he is.

“Yeah”, Rose says, “You are.”

“I’m making it as good as it can be.”, Al insists. “Make it not weird.”

She looks at him, eyes still suspiciously bright, but there’s something else in there, too.

“You—“, she starts, “I think you’re wrong. I think you’re punishing yourself for something. I don’t know what or why, but you’ve been doing it for a while, and I don’t understand, and Scorpius doesn’t either and I really think you need to stop, you’re not—that’s not the good way to do things Al, it doesn’t help if you shut everyone out all the time—”

“Stop.”, Al says, hard. He presses his eyes together.

She stops.

“Al…”, she says, her voice slowly fading.

“I just—I can’t, alright. It’s too—not now. It’s not the right time for this stuff.”

“It never is with you.”, Rose says, gently. Al looks back up at her. This time she really is almost crying. He looks back down.

“Well, it isn’t.”, he says.

They’re silent again.

“I wish you didn’t come.”, Al says, after all.

It’s still a harsh confession, but he feels like he needs to say it now, like that somehow justifies everything else. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.

“I know.”, says Rose and this time he can hear the tears even if he can’t see them, “I know. I just don’t understand why.”

* * *

Al goes back to the art room. Rose follows him.

They haven’t gotten anything from Al’s bedroom, except maybe slightly red eyes, in Rose’ case, but she hasn’t actually cried, and she has at least a decade and a half worth of emotional control under her belt. If Fawley or Scorpius notice, they don’t say anything.

Al tries to be a good host, and makes some more tea.

They chat.

Fawley asks about the future. He does that all the time now, Al’s noticed. It’s in the way he made Al promise to continue with his project even though he’ll never be done in time, and also in how he asks Rose and Scorpius about their plans. They’re more impressive than Al’s, that’s for sure, but that’s always been true.

Eventually, Al has to head to work. He has an evening shift, and he can’t really get out of it. He’s pretty sure that Fawley will fall asleep pretty soon anyway, he’s been up so long today. That makes it a little better.

“I need to go to work´.”, he announces, when his alarm goes off.

“Oh.”, says Scorpius.

Rose is just looking.

“So”, says Al awkwardly, “Are you gonna—?”

“We could stay here”, Scorpius offers, “If Alistair doesn’t mind.”

That’s not what Al meant at all.

Scorpius, of course, can’t technically know what he’s just said to Rose only a short time before, so he’s not trying to be—

On the other hand, it would be better if there were someone with Alistair while he was away.

The cloud of indecision feels like it wants to strangle him.

“I’m not good company these days”, Fawley says, “Al would know. I really just sleep an inappropriate amount.”

“We can stay here then until you fall asleep”, says Rose. She doesn’t look at Al when she says: “If that’s okay.”

There’s no real answer forthcoming.

“I really need to go.”, Al says. He does. He doesn’t have time for complicated feelings. He rarely does these days, even when there’s so much material. Maybe that’s why, specifically.

He doesn’t really want them to stay here. He didn’t want them to be here in the first place. But he’s already fled that conversation out of his bedroom with Rose and he wants to start that back up again even less.

“Just—put the key under the matt, or something.”

* * *

Work is busy that night, and Al is almost glad.

That makes it easier to ignore Jessica’s aggressive cheerfulness, and even the general stupidity of customers. They all just kind of blur together, letting his mind exist in that mental fog he likes to reside in with just his hands busy. Nobody has time to ask him personal questions, it’s almost like he doesn’t have to be a person that hard. It’s a relief.

Still, as it nears midnight, he’s glad that he’ll be able to go home soon.

He can’t relax when he isn’t there, the anxiety that something might happen to Fawley, asleep and alone, is too intense.

Not something.

Something very specific.

But he’s still dancing around that word.

When he comes into the flat, the lights are still on, which immediately rings all of Al’s alarm bells.

Al pulls his wand. He’s not sure what could be going on or what he could do, but he’s definitely not going to—

_Oh._

“Merlin!”, he swears loudly, “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

Rose and Scorpius are still there, sat cuddled together on Al’s chair next to Fawley’s bed, Rose’ head nuzzled in the bend of Scorpius shoulder.

“It’s just us.”, Scorpius says quietly.

“I can see that.”, says Al, voice still too loud, heart still beating to hard.

“I thought I had home invaders or something.”

“Just us.”, Rose says.

Al can see now, on close inspection, that she’s almost asleep against Scorpius, so comfortable next to him that it almost feels like Al’s the one intruding on them.

He isn’t used to that.

He kind of is, in the sense that he’s been the third wheel to their relationship for a real long time now, but—he doesn’t usually notice as much.

“We should get going, then, love.”, Scorpius says, and shakes Rose gently.

As she stretches carefully, Scorpius looks over at Al. 

“You’re not mad, are you?”, he says on the same soft tone he’s just used with Rose.

Al shakes his head, looks away.

He’s not even lying.

Work has sucked that out of him, for now, the need to get away from the two of them, to get them away from him and his home and Fawley—the thing that Rose tried to make him name. He doesn’t feel like that now. Now, he feels sad and stupid and lonely and—and grateful, for something he didn’t think he wanted. And he wants to say that, maybe, but--

He’s just so tired. Lately he’s always tired, and lately doesn’t seem to be passing, either. 

“We didn’t want to just leave him alone.”, Scorpius says, “It doesn’t—it’s not right.”

“Yeah.”, says Al, “I don’t like that, either.”

Scorpius gives him a slight smile as he reaches for his crutches.

Rose seems unsteady on her feet, but she helps Scorpius get up, anyway.

She hugs Al for good-bye.

“See you soon.”, she says, sleepily, petting at the back of his head in an affectionate gesture.

Al is flooded with a relief he can’t quantify.

She pulls back, clearly waiting for an answer.

“Yeah”, he says, “See you soon.”

The smile he gets back almost hurts.

* * *

Fawley doesn’t make him talk about it, until he does. Al tries to dodge it, anyway, but then Fawley says: “I need you to do these things for me.”

Al can’t say no.

This is his job, actually, he remembers as he does his research on how he needs to report a death to the ministry. Will need to report a death. His eyes are burning, and it makes him want to run away to—he doesn’t know where. The past, maybe. That’s impossible, but he won’t do that.

Of course he won’t do that.

“Can you do that for me?”, Fawley asks, and of course he will.

“Of course I will.”

* * *

Not long after that, Fawley starts to become very cold. Not emotionally. Physically, He’s just cold all the time, no matter how far up Al turns the thermostat, or how many blankets he covers Fawley in.

Al holds his hand while Fawley shivers instead.

He doesn’t cry, neither of them does.

Al doesn’t even feel lonely in those last days, even though, technically, he is.

He writes Rose and Scorpius a bit, but they don’t come to visit again. Nobody else comes to visit, either.

Fawley is there, though, and Al is there for him, as much as he can.

* * *

“Thank you”, Fawley mutters into his pillow before he falls asleep. Al almost doesn’t hear it, to engrossed in his work, painting next to him. It’s been like this all day, not much for conversation, but silent company and concentration.

“What?”, Al says, a little too late, brain caught up somewhere else and he isn’t sure he heard correctly. But Fawley’s asleep already, rattling breaths going evenly.

Al sighs and blinks at the paper in front of him. His eyes are tired, hurting in the sockets. He really should get to sleep.

It only takes him a couple more minutes to actually get up and do it.

* * *

When he wakes up again, he doesn’t check on Fawley right away, opts to make breakfast first. He’s holding Fawley’s plate with only one hand, which he probably shouldn’t, because it’s heavy and he might drop it—

Except it doesn’t matter. It won’t ever matter anymore.

Al looks over at Fawley’s face and he knows.

It’s not—it’s not that his eyes are open and glassy, or his limps are stretched in weird positions or that his tongue is hanging out like in some of those cartoons that Lily was obsessed with for half a year when she was fourteen. Of course it doesn’t.

But death doesn’t look like sleep, either. It’s not peaceful. It’s still and cold and terrible and—

Al drops the plate.

It breaks into a million pieces.

* * *

Al sets the glass of water he’s been holding in his other hand down, very slowly.

Then he goes to clean up the plate. He notices that his hands are shaking, but he can’t seem to stop it.

It takes him a few times to conjure up the patronus to report the death.

He writes to the funeral home, then goes down to the _Leaky Cauldron_ to call and confirm some things. He needs to set the list in motion that he and Fawley made together for this.

There’s the ministry, too. There are papers to be filled out. He hands over Fawley’s testament without looking what’s inside of it, and someone explains the procedure to him. He takes notes, because he knows that the memory will pearl off him as soon as he leaves the building.

“You can stay until everything’s processed”, the lady says to him, and Al asks himself for half a minute why the hell she would want him to hang out with her in her tiny office for up to a month, until he realises that she means the flat. Where Al lives. His home.

He decides that this is a problem for later.

Now—the list.

He needs to do one shift at work. There is some more paperwork, and then Al has to go talk to the people at the funeral home in person, and at the cemetery and make sure all the other things that Fawley wanted—he goes to Gringotts. When he gets a letter from a prospective customer, he pulls Fawley’s ads from the newspapers.

The day before the funeral, he makes himself find his dress robes. It takes him two tries to hex the crinkles out of them. At least they still fit. Al doesn’t think he’s worn them since Hogwarts. Vic’s wedding, maybe? He doesn’t remember.

It’s then that it occurs to him that he should—say something, probably. To someone.

That’s a thing that people do after a death, right? Announcements? There are newspaper ads for that, too, but that doesn’t seem right.

That’s Al’s first thought, anyway, until he remembers how he found Fawley in the first place, and how Fawley found some of his less prestigious customers, so he pulls out a piece of parchment and writes a letter.

It’ll be in the paper only tomorrow morning, the morning of the funeral, too late, maybe, but perhaps that’s better than nothing.

Funerals are public record, anyway, he’s pretty sure. Or something.

Still—it occurs to him that he probably should say something. Probably should have said something already, though, right now, it eludes him what good that would do.

He sits down and pulls out another piece of paper.

He puts the pen down. He doesn’t know what he wants to write—there are no—what does any of this even—how do you--?

The funeral is tomorrow., he writes down.

He stares at it for a minute, maybe longer.

In the end, he just adds the time and the place below.

He doesn’t have the energy for anything else.

He mails it just like that, doesn’t even sign it. Ros knows his handwriting. That’s who he sends it to, just Rose. And Scorpius he supposes. There are probably more people he should—but he can’t think right now, he just can’t. This will have to be enough.

He gets an answer back almost right away, or at least as owls can go within London. He doesn’t find the strength to open it.

* * *

Al isn’t the only person at the funeral. He almost expected to be, for some reason, but he isn’t.

It’s not a big funeral, either, he doesn’t think, but he’s young enough and has been fortunate enough to not really have a frame of reference. He knows that Uncle Ron’s funeral was really big, and this one isn’t like that, but it also doesn’t look like the funeral of a person that didn’t have anybody.

Al doesn’t even know where all of those people came from. He doesn’t even know them.

Well, some of them he knows. The Diggorys are there, Fawley’s last bigger clients. That kind of makes sense, he supposes.

When he sees Cassie McKinnon from the M.Ars gallery, he figures that maybe it’s just that news travels faster than he thinks. Sure, he didn’t really say a lot, but there were people that knew. At the ministry. The healer. Testament lady. And Fawley isn’t really famous, but he is at least notable, sort of, in the village of Wizarding Britain, so maybe it makes sense that some people would have paid attention.

Rose and Scorpius come, too. Al expected that. He did send that letter, and he isn’t stupid. He isn’t sure if he feels better for it, but he lets them surround him, take his hands into theirs as silent tears come down his cheeks.

Some kind of ministry spokesperson gives a speech about Fawley’s contributions to Wizarding culture. She seems to sort of know about his work, but it’s obvious that she didn’t know him at all as a person.

Al thought that maybe he would do that, say a few words that should be said at the grave of a person, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to say them in front of those people who don’t even know anything.

So he just stands there, sort of in the back. Some of the people he knows, some of the people that know him, come up to give their condolences. He nods at them, a bit awkwardly, squeezes out a thanks every once in a while.

He stays there until the very end, until every other person is already gone.

Rose and Scorpius stay with him, unmoved at his side, until eventually, they tuck him away.

They make him go to the _Leaky Cauldron_ for soup afterwards. They’re talking to him, too, making some kind of conversation, but Al’s mind keeps going off. He isn’t good for this right now, and he doesn’t have it in him to pretend.

They are in a sort of quiet booth, but people are coming through anyway, on their way to Diagon Alley, on their way out. It’s just as busy as always, but it feels hollow, like there’s a barrier between Al and the rest of everything that’s happening.

Because Fawley is dead.

Because Fawley is dead, and that’s supposed to be the biggest thing in the world, and it is, to Al, has been, to Al, for the last couple of years. But out here, it isn’t.

It isn’t, and everyone else is just going about their business., even though Fawley’s _dead._ It’s like reality has broken, somehow, and nothing lines up anymore.

Everything is moving, but Al’s gotten caught on this thing that’s too big to just go down the big drain. Missed a beat, then another, when he doesn’t understand how there can even still be something that beats.

And he can’t catch up, he can’t—suddenly, he can’t do this. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be at home, he wants to be away from all this—

“I should go.”, he says quietly.

Rose and Scorpius are looking at him, then at each other. They’re doing that thing again, talking without speaking, like they do a lot, enough that Al can usually parse their conversations, too, but this is off-beat, too, and he can’t decipher anything, heart raising too much and—

“You can—“, Scorpius says, “Do you need—Do you want to come to ours for a bit?”

“The lady said that I could stay at least until the inheritance is sorted”, Al says. He remembers that, almost word to word, stored like on tape when the words barely make any sense.

Scorpius blinks. “Uh yeah, of course—I didn’t mean—I just meant in general. For other reasons, too. If you need anything.”

Al doesn’t have any other reason. He just needs to get away. He just needs to go home.

“Thanks.”, he says, lamely. It doesn’t sound like he means it.

He gives himself a little push. “Thank you”, he says, and this time his voice is shaking slightly. “For coming. And everything.”

“Of course.”, says Rose. She squeezes his hand again. He looks at her, but her expression doesn’t register. “Come around to ours, alright?”, she says. “Tomorrow?”

Al nods. "Yeah, sure. I’ll come.”

* * *

Al goes home.

His brain isn’t really there, neither at home, nor on the way there. He’s still at the funeral, somehow, this weird event that doesn’t make any sense. It didn’t even happen like it was supposed to.

Nobody was even there—or not anyone that should have been. Rose and Scorpius, but that was for him more than Fawley. Mrs. Marlow should have come. And Cath. There weren’t really that many people that knew and liked him, had any sort of role in his life, Al isn’t in any illusion over that. But they should have been there. Something at least. Not strangers. Not people that don’t even know anything. It would have been enough, maybe.

He walks inside the building, up the stairs, into the flat.

The art room is a mess. It always is, but it seems louder, now.

The bed’s still there, in the middle of the room, all the art stuff left around it. Al hasn’t gotten around to tidying. Hasn’t even gotten around to looking at it, properly, but now—

Al feels almost dizzy all of a sudden, except that doesn’t make sense. His legs give out under him, or maybe they don’t, maybe it’s him that lets them bend underneath him, knees on the floor. Pain spreads dull through his knees, but he doesn’t really register it.

His throat is raw and his eyes are burning, and he suddenly can’t breath anymore, and he’s crying, crying, wailing perhaps and he doesn’t know how this happened but it is, it is happening now and he can’t—he can’t stop.

He doesn’t know how long it goes on like this, ugly sobs mixed with desperate breaths for air.

Something falls out of the pocket of his robes, right there on the floor.

Al blinks, needs a few tries to reign in the blur in his eyes enough to focus on what it is.

The phone.

He flips it open reflexively. The display shines brightly through the room, Al hasn’t bothered to turn the lights on, and the shine of it cuts into his eyes now.

It’s opened up on the contact page last opened.

Al presses his eyes together, but it’s no use. He’s only crying harder.

His hand curls around the phone almost violently, grips so tight it hurts, presses down on one of the buttons—

“Beeb!”

Al drops the phone again.

It keeps ringing.

Al has to wipe his eyes with a tail of his robes before he can pick it back up, but by then, it’s stopped ringing. There’s a voice there, instead.

Al presses it against his ear.

“Al?”, Cath says, voices a little mechanic over the line, “Al, are you okay?”

He lets out a shuttering breath, doesn’t have the air to answer.

“Al?”, she says again.

Al has a vague notion of apologising, telling her he dialled on accident, but that doesn’t make the way from his brain to his mouth down the line.

“Alistair is dead.”

He hears a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

“Oh”, Cath says, her voice changed somehow, “Al, I’m so sorry, that’s terrible—”

Another wave of sobs overcomes him, and he can’t formulate a proper response.

“Al are you—“, Cath says, “Do you want me to come over?”

“Yeah”, Al sobs, “Yes, please.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading and please tell me what you think of this! It was really hard to write and I did my best to handle everything well, but I think that it might feel a bit too stretched out. Still, I hope you liked it! Please tell me about it!

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how painting works, or bars, or cafés, or getting your life together. I'm very sorry.


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